Forced Wedding
by Crius
Summary: After being forced to marry the Emperor's prime enforcer, Darth Vader, what will happen when ex-Senator Amidala discovers the truth of the man behind the monster?
1. Wedding Night

**Forced Wedding**

Summary: In a world where Palpatine is Emperor and the Jedi are all but extinct, ex-Senator Padmé Amidala is compelled to marry Darth Vader, the Emperor's right hand man. Little does she suspect the truth concerning Palpatine's prime enforcer. What will she do when she discovers the man behind the mask?

Disclaimer: I own nothing. No copyright infringement is intended. Just a harmless piece of fun, but please don't reproduce this without asking me first!

Pairings: VaderxAmidala, naturally.

Author Note: This fic warrants an explanation. The canny (or widely read) reader will note that it is very similar to another fic on this site entitled Shattered by Nautica7mk (fic id: 2878917, check it out, it's really good), which has, regrettably, remained derelict for some time now. I happen to really like that fic, and honestly hope that it gets finished someday (hint, hint if you're reading Nautica7mk). In the meantime however, the basic idea behind that story just seemed too good to let die, so I've resurrected it and put what I hope is my own unique spin on it (a spin that will become eminently clear in Chapter 4, as the divisions currently stand). If this falls under 'stealing another author's fic' someone let me know and I'll take it down, otherwise I'll just plow ahead with it.

Now that that's all out of the way, on with the show...

* * *

Padmé Amidala Vader. She hated the name already, even though it was not hers yet. _That will change shortly_, she thought as the Nubian holy man stood before her and her soon-to-be husband, reciting the sacred ceremonies for marriage. Unable to bear the mockery that was being made of ancient Nubian tradition, she looked instead upon her future husband. Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith and right-hand man of Emperor Palpatine himself was a tall and imposing figure. He dressed in robes highly reminiscent of those once worn by the Jedi Order, an ironic mockery considering the fact that Vader has personally killed hundreds of Jedi. His robes were unrelieved black, however, rather than the browns or beiges that the noble warriors of the Republic once favoured. His cowl was up, concealing most of his head, and what was not concealed by the cowl was hidden by the mask he wore. The mask consisted of two chalk-white halves, joined by a bronzed durasteel strip that ran up the centreline of Lord Vader's face, widening slightly into an ovoid at the centre of its forehead, like a third eye. Wide oval holes were cut into the mask to accommodate eyes, but the shadows of his cowl were so deep that none could discern whether any eyes actually looked out from those slits. A wide red stripe climbed from the upper edge of each eyehole towards where his hairline ought to be, creating an almost primitive image of a death's head. It was an image known and feared now throughout the entire galaxy, for Darth Vader was the very definition of a monster. His only purpose seemed to be to go where Palpatine told him to go and to kill those whom Palpatine told him to kill. He showed no mercy, knew no pity except to give his victims quick and clean deaths, and seemingly cared nothing for the blood that stained his black-gloved hands.

Some whispered that Lord Vader, as he was colloquially known, was a fallen Jedi, taking revenge on the Order that cast him out. Others suggested that he was the rebirth of some ancient Sith Lord, perhaps Naga Sadow, or Exar Kun, returned to complete their ultimate goal of toppling the Republic. Still others stated that he was simply a machine, built to do Palpatine's bidding, which was why he never questioned his orders or spared anyone, and also why no one has ever seen what lay beneath the mask that he wore. Padmé wondered if she would see what lay beneath the mask. Lord Vader has never been known to be without it. Anyone who may have seen him has never lived to tell the tale. Would he take it off to sleep with her? She did not know, and hoped never to find out, for if she had anything to say about it, Lord Vader would never enter her bed. Of course, she was aware that it would be all too easy for the Sith Lord to force her, he was taller and physically stronger, a trained warrior and he wielded the power of the Force. Considering all these strikes against her, she knew that her body would be his any time he wished it, but she would never surrender it to him willingly.

Her attention was brought back to the moment by the question she has been dreading.

"Padmé Amidala, will you take this man to be your husband, to love, cherish and honour for the rest of your life?"

"I will," she responded in a clear, although quiet, voice, all the while blessing her years as a politician which allowed her to speak without showing her true emotions, which would have had her run screaming from this ceremony.

"I pronounce you man and wife, until death do you part." the holy man declared, and that was it. Padmé Amidala was no more, she was now the Lady Vader.

Since the ceremony was a private one, the departure of the holy man once he had completed his duty left the newlywed couple alone. Padmé had not been able to stand the thought of having her parents watch as she was forced to marry this monster, and no one knew whether Lord Vader had any family at all. Unwilling to acknowledge her new marital status or, by extension, her new husband, Padmé simply stood looking out over the great lakes that made this part of Naboo such a beautiful place to be. She glanced up and back to see Lord Vader also facing out, apparently taking in the view, although his expressionless mask revealed nothing of whether or not he was enjoying it. At last, after a few more minutes, she broke the silence.

"Are you happy now?" she asked him.

"Happy?" his voice was deep and growling, but it sounded somewhat puzzled.

"You have what you wanted, don't you? A beautiful wife, a trophy to hang on your arm at Imperial functions and please you in bed at nights, isn't that why you forced me to marry you?"

"Senator, _you_ proposed to _me_, not the other way around. I have forced nothing," Vader definitely sounded perplexed now, "I have no idea what you are talking about."

"Don't lie!" she rounded on him, "Palpatine threatened Naboo if I did not marry you! He promised to find and kill all my relatives here unless I asked you to marry me! You just wanted to appear as the innocent party in this! Well I wasn't fooled, I know that you were behind this."

"I had no idea," Vader simply stated, as though they were discussing how nice the weather was.

"I don't believe you!"

"As is your prerogative, Senator."

Padmé wanted to scream in anger, she wanted to beat Vader into a bloody pulp, firstly for lying about his involvement and then for being so indifferent to her anger. Of course she knew that she had no chance of realising her desire, but it made her feel better about it.

"I take it you are unhappy with my presence Senator," Vader made it more of a statement than a question, "so I shall leave you for now. Please do not think to wander off; forced or not, you are my wife and I do not wish to risk you coming to harm from Rebels who might seek to strike at me."

Without waiting for Padmé's response he turned and stalked off, his cloak swirling dramatically around him. As soon as he was gone Padmé let out a breath she did not realise she had been holding. She had expected some kind of response for her outburst, some punishment. Every story she had ever heard about Vader pointed to him being mercurial and quick-tempered. He was known for strangling subordinates who failed him, and generally anyone who came near him when he had specifically asked them not to, such as the holo-reporters who had once made it their life's mission to find out who Darth Vader really was under the mask. Strangely, however, he had taken her in stride, completely unruffled by her anger at him, although she supposed a lot of people were angry with Lord Vader, particularly the families of those he had killed over the years, so he must be used to dealing with that. Perhaps she had simply caught him on one of his good days.

She continued to stare out at the lakes as the sun grew lower and lower in the sky, all the while considering her new station in life. Her days as a Senator were now over, although Vader still addressed her by her title. She would probably lose all credibility with her former friends in the Senate, since they were all pro-democracy and she had just married the chief enforcer of democracy's greatest enemy. Either that or they would attempt to rescue her, which she would have to decline lest Palpatine and Vader destroy Naboo. All in all the prospects were bleak. She had no idea what being Lord Vader's wife would entail, but she was certain that if any official duties were assigned to her, they would not be ones she would relish or enjoy, and in all likelihood they would call on her to do something she detested doing. So she was either condemned to sheer boredom, if Vader chose for her to remain sequestered as his wife, relieved only by whatever official functions he might attend, or she was condemned to taking on work that she was sure she would hate, since it would invariably involve spreading the lies of the Empire. She considered the situation from every angle, and could come up with no less distasteful angles or lines of thought at all.

Suddenly she shivered and, realising that the sun had well and truly set now, turned to go inside herself. On arriving at the chambers she shared with Vader now, she discovered to her surprise, that he was not there. She shed the beautiful wedding gown that Vader had procured for her at her own request and carefully hung it up in the closet. Something bugged her about the closet, but she could not put her finger on it for several moments. Then it hit her; there were only dresses in it. Vader did not seem like the dress wearing type, so where were all his clothes? There was not even any sleepwear for a man. Did he sleep? She realised that she knew nothing whatsoever about the man she was now married to. She did not even know if he had the same basic requirements for food and sleep as she did. She did not know his species, his homeworld, whether he had now, or had ever had any family, or indeed anything beyond his name, his position in the Empire and various stories she had heard about him.

A knock on the bedroom door startled her out of her reverie. Who could get in here and would knock? Her response was pure reflex.

"Who is it?"

"Senator," said the deep growling voice on the other side of the door, "There are only two key-cards capable of unlocking these chambers so your question is pointless, it can only be me."

"May I have a moment?" she called back, "I'm not dressed."

"Certainly," Vader replied, "Please indicate when you are decently attired, I wish to ask you something."

Padmé dressed hurriedly and then opened the door to find Vader standing there patiently.

"Senator," he acknowledged, as he stepped into the room.

"You wish something of me, Vader?" she asked, closing the door behind him and then stepping away to face him in the middle of the room.

"I will ask you a question that is somewhat blunt, Senator, but I wish for you to answer me both civilly and honestly."

"Of course," she said, wondering where this was going.

"Do you wish for me to share your bed?"

He had been right, it was a blunt question. It was also one she was totally unprepared for. She had a choice in the matter?

"It is your body, Senator," he said, as though reading her thoughts.

_No!_ her mind was screaming at her, but she was hesitant to say it out loud, fearful of the consequences for Naboo and its people if she went through with such open defiance. Voicing her opinion, however proved unnecessary. She supposed he must have read it through the Force, for he turned away.

"I see," if she did not know better, for a moment she might have thought he looked wounded, "In that case I shall bid you good night Senator."

He made for the door and had it open before she thought to call him back.

"Where will you sleep then?"

He stopped briefly, but did not turn around.

"I am no stranger to the floor, Senator."

Then he walked out and closed the door behind him. She stood there speechless. She could not believe that she had just effectively ordered Darth Vader out of her bedroom. More to the point she could not believe he had just gone without a word of protest or a single threat. This ran counter to everything she knew about him. He was a Sith, for Force's sake! What sort of Sith Lord would meekly walk out of a room just because he was told to do so by a woman less than three quarters his height and probably less than half his weight? Was this some ploy to lure her into a false sense of security? Then his final comment processed through her shock-shrouded brain. _The floor?? _Sith Lord or not, he was definitely a strange one. If anything she should be the one sleeping outside on the…floor. Yet he was being gallant and giving her the bed, something few normal men would have done, let alone one of the most evil beings in the galaxy. Gallantry from a Sith Lord, this was not turning out the way she had expected at all.

Feeling rather guilty, Padmé made to go outside and tell Vader that as long as nothing happened he was welcome to share the bed with her. Evil or not, making him take the floor felt very petty to her, even if she did feel he deserved a horrible death for all the things he had done. However her plan to assuage her own conscience was foiled by the door. It would not open. She stared hard at the door handle. The internal doors of these chambers had no locks on them, she knew that from her previous stays here. Why then would the door not open? It was not too heavy, and had been swung closed easily mere moments ago. The only explanation that jumped to mind was him. For some reason he was holding the door closed, but why? Did he want to sleep on the floor?

Suddenly a wave of tiredness washed over her. She had seen and felt too much today, and it was catching up with her now. Deciding to abandon her futile attempts to shift the immovable door, she got ready for bed, using the fresher that was directly off the bedroom, and slid into the bed. As she did so, she felt a last lingering pang of guilt. Vader did not even have any pillows or blankets out there with him. They were all in here with her. Then she was unconscious, simply too tired to think any longer.

Darth Vader felt satisfaction as he felt Senator Amidala finally succumb to his sleep suggestion, now he would have time for contemplation without her errant thoughts getting in the way. The woman intrigued him, she had done from the very moment she had proposed to him. It had been a new experience for him, the idea that someone might find him romantically attractive. Of course now he knew the truth of that idea. He repulsed her, and she had only gone through with it to save her planet from the perceived threat of occupation. The thought that she hated him evoked something he could not identify. He did not have many emotions any longer. Years of hard training and harder missions had burned away his capacity to feel. Mostly he was either angry or empty. Now, however, he was feeling things he had never felt before, and that was what intrigued him about Senator Amidala. No one had ever caused such changes in him before, that he could recall. He wanted to see why this was, and more importantly what she was doing to him. Then he would be able to armour himself against it and return to his existence as Dark Lord of the Sith.

He also wanted to know why it was so important to his master that they be together. Why would Palpatine threaten Naboo just to get this woman to marry him? There was no justification for an invasion of Naboo. They were completely peaceable and accepting of the Emperor's new rule, so Palpatine would never have carried out his threat. His master only ordered intervention where a planet was breaking Imperial law or suffering from internal unrest. He had read the intelligence reports for Naboo before coming here, and they indicated a remarkably stable culture, which, although their proclivities for democracy might easily have caused them to be discontent, seemed to have adapted remarkably well and swiftly to Imperial rule. He decided to meditate and see if the Force would provide him with any insight. Seating himself on the floor, he closed his eyes and reached out, sending his questions out into the Force, to see what answers he might be able to glean from it.

* * *

Padmé woke the next morning to discover that the curtains she had drawn in the night had been pulled back to allow the golden rays of the sun entrance into her bedroom. That meant that Vader had been in here while she was sleeping. Oddly the thought did not frighten her as much as she thought it should have. His actions so far had indicated that she was of no particular physical interest to him, and while she still feared that he might force her against her will, the idea was less immediate and more abstract than it had been before. She had lasted the first night with her honour intact, and it gave her a shred of confidence that she might last another.

Getting up, she showered and dressed in a simple golden summer dress that left her arms bare but had a full length skirt, before attempting to test the bedroom door. Unlike last night, it opened with ease and she slipped out. Padding into the kitchen area lightly she found the table spread with food of all sorts. Idly she wondered if Vader had ordered room service or had done this himself. The image of the dreaded Sith Lord with an apron over his dark robes working the cooking unit expertly to make the generous spread that was on the table was good for a laugh, and with her bleak situation stretching before her she would take all the laughs she could get. She was careful, however, to bury the thought, Vader would probably not take too kindly to the image, and she did not want to test his anger.

It was then that her rational mind caught up with her, and she scolded herself severely. One day and one night of marriage and already she was being seduced by his lies. She had to keep firmly in mind the fact that her husband was a monster. While they were alone he might act as though he was a normal person, even a gentleman, but in reality he was a cold-blooded killer. He chose to follow Palpatine, to kill for him. Whatever kindnesses or considerations he might show for her were more than outweighed by his atrocities on innocent civilians on countless worlds. And she had ample proof from what she had heard that those kindnesses and considerations were, in all likelihood, going to be fleeting.

_He's a murderer. He's a murderer. He's a murderer._

She found that the mantra helped. It banished all the warm thoughts she had been having about him since yesterday evening. It even reversed her plan to leave a pillow and blanket outside in case he should elect to take the floor for another night. Let him sleep on the floor! She hoped it was cold and hard for him as well! More coldly, she picked up her plate and went out in search of her husband. She found the Sith Lord standing on their balcony, still dressed in his black robes, with his back to her, looking up at the sun. She repeated her mantra in her head as she watched him warily from behind.

"Pack your things, Senator," he said, not even deigning to look at her, "We are leaving."

"Am I permitted to know where we are going?" she asked icily.

"Fondor," Vader replied, apparently unperturbed by her tone "The Emperor has ordered me back to the Fleet, specifically to command the newest design of Star Destroyer, the Executor. Our transport leaves in three hours."

Having received her marching orders, and not wishing to spend any longer in the company of the Sith Lord than necessary, she headed back to her room to pack.

Vader marked her exit idly as he contemplated the new turns in events. Last night and this morning were turning out to be most informative, most informative indeed. His meditation had revealed to him a vision, a vision of his children with Padmé. He sensed that this was what Palpatine wanted, to possess his offspring and to raise them as Sith. Vader would have been willing to oblige him, if it did not mean raping the Senator. Killing traitors was one thing, raping defenceless women was quite another and he was not willing to go that far, not for anyone. He knew now that it was highly unlikely that the Senator would ever feel any kind of affection for him. He had marked her changed mindset towards him, although her little mantra was liable to give him a headache if she continued to use it. He wondered when weeding out seditionists and traitors who were a danger to society had become classed as murder. He thought it was justice. After all the laws were very clear, and the punishments well publicised. How she could blame him for executing those laws he could not fathom, but it was just one among many puzzles that existed around the Senator, so he did not dwell on it. Perhaps she was simply ill-informed. He put it out of his mind for now, there were other things to consider now, like his new command and the new missions he was sure to receive from his master.

* * *

Like it? Hate it? Leave a review and let me know.


	2. Shipboard

For disclaimers, warnings and pairing notifications see chapter 1.

Author Note: Well almost a month later, I think I am safe from accusations of plagiarism. If someone were going to say something they would have got back to me by now, right? I hope so, anyway. I'd like to thank all my reviewers, it was an awesome response, the best I have ever gotten for a single posted chapter. I'd also like to thank my beta, Ten no Kasou, who, although she hasn't gotten back to me yet for this particular chapter, is wading through a mountain of text that I have written. So many thanks to her for her hard work on all of that. Now on with the show...

* * *

Padmé was bored out of her skull. Shipboard life for her was very dull, since she had no official duty aboard. Most of her days the past year had been spent confined to the living space she shared with Vader, although shared was a very loose term. She saw him twice a day, in the morning and the evening when he came to check on her, presumably to ensure that she was still alive. When he did so, he never spoke to her, never uttered so much as a word. Other than that she seldom saw him. He spoke very rarely to her, and he never ever touched her, not so much as a finger on her person. The memory of their wedding night, the longest conversation they had ever had, had faded in her memory, and the old fear that he would seek to take what was his had arisen anew in her. Some nights she lay awake, waiting for him to come in, to tell her that tonight was the night she would lose the one thing left to her, the sanctity of her person. In all other respects she was no better than a slave. She could not go anywhere without his express permission and, more often than not, an armed guard. She could no longer speak as she wished, he expected her to be publicly accepting of the Empire, although he did not ask her to approve of it, perhaps sensing that that was going too far. She could no longer contact her friends, and the only news she got of what was going on in the galaxy at large came from the propaganda-laced holo-news programmes. She had not surrendered, however, had not given in to Vader and Palpatine yet. She still staunchly maintained her cold condemnation of them both, a continuing resistance she was proud of, since it was the only avenue really left to her. She had not given in to their ideology, she had not broken and sought to end her own life, she had maintained her beliefs and her strength in them.

Today, however would see that change, although she did not know it to begin with. It was a simple vid-news report that caused it. The report stated that yet again Vader had quelled a rebellion, this time on Chandrila. She had known of his efforts since they arrived in orbit around the verdant planet almost three weeks ago. Today, however, the full toll of his actions was published. Four thousand civilians were reported dead, collateral casualties from running fire-fights with Rebel forces. Padmé had no doubt that in fact most of those four thousand had died either under Vader's simple and brutal interrogation technique of slowly strangling someone until they talked or died or because they had friends and family in the Rebellion and were killed as retribution. These things were no different than normal; she was numbed to such things by now. What really hit her, however, was the report of Mon Mothma's death. She sat there shocked, unable to believe that Mothma was gone. She had always been such a bright, pure beacon in the Senate. Padmé had always felt that so long as Mon Mothma survived, the Republic had a chance. Now she was gone, among those Rebels to fall in battle apparently. For a moment she sat there, simply overwhelmed by the shock of a woman who was a staunch supporter of democracy and whom she had once called friends and ally. It was as though the Republic had died all over again. Then her grief and rage at the Empire for destroying such a bright beacon of virtue in the galaxy over flowed. She screamed her rage and grief to all the four walls. Her fist crashed through the vid-screen, badly lacerating her knuckles but she barely noticed. She collapsed, sobbing on the floor, cradling her injured hand to herself. Then it got worse, Vader rushed in in a billow of robes. He had felt his wife's anguish through the Force and hurried to her, fearing assassins or some other terrible deed in the making.

Confronted with the sight of his wife huddled on the floor of their living area sobbing in grief, he felt something well up inside of him, one of those many feelings that he could not put a name to. He gathered her up gently in his arms, a movement she only briefly resisted before letting herself relax into his hold. Carrying her to her bed, he laid her on it and disappeared briefly. He returned moments later with a med-kit and proceeded to apply bacta patches to the lacerations on her hand. The patches also contained strong antibiotics to combat any infection she might pick up.

Once again she was surprised at his kindness, and it brought the memory of their wedding night flooding back. How could a man that was so cold and ruthless in despatching the Emperor's political enemies be so gentle and tender towards her?

"How could you do it?" she asked bitterly while watching him work.

"Do what, Senator?" he queried.

"Kill Mon Mothma in cold blood," she replied coldly, "What did she do? Propose a motion Palpatine didn't like in the Senate?"

The eye-slits of the mask met her own eyes.

"Mon Mothma was a known traitor, Senator. Imperial Intelligence linked her to the Rebel cell operating on Chandrila, and it turns out they were right. I did not kill Mon Mothma in cold blood, she was an armed combatant on a battlefield, in fact she was directing the battle herself and fired on me when I led my troops to storm her command post. Would you deny me the right to defend myself in combat?"

That brought her up short. Of course she did not deny the right of any sentient to fight to preserve their own life. If she did then she would be even worse than the Emperor and Vader. All beings had a right to defend their lives. Even known criminals had that at court proceedings, even in the Empire.

"No I suppose not," she muttered, "But what about all those civilian casualties?"

"Civilian casualties are difficult to avoid, Senator, if your enemies insist on using them as human shields," Vader said in a tone that sounded positively dry.

"Human shields?" Padmé asked, aghast, "The Rebellion would never use human shields! You're lying!"

"Believe what you will, Senator," Vader's voice had returned to blank imperturbability, "But I suggest you ask Bail Organa about it some time. I'm sure he has ties to the Rebellion, even if I have no proof."

"How can I ask Bail anything?" she asked, bitter once more from the reminder of her forced solitude, "I'm not permitted to contact anyone here."

"That will change, Senator," Vader stated, "I have been recalled to Coruscant. Even now the Executor is headed there, and we shall arrive in a few hours. That was the reason I was headed down here in the first place, to suggest you pack. However with your hand, I believe it would now be best if I assigned you a crewman to actually do the packing."

He stood up to his full height once again, his treatment of her wounds complete. She found herself missing the tender touch of his gloved hands. Even if she did despise him, she needed some sort of human contact, and he was all she had.

"Thank you," she said softly, meaning it to suffice for both her hand and the assistance with packing.

Vader made no reply. He simply stalked out, leaving her alone once more. A few minutes later there was a timid knock on the door, and she opened it to find a trembling female crewwoman on the other side.

"L-Lord Vader o-ordered me to assist you m-milady," she stammered out, obviously terrified out of her wits to be serving the wife of Lord Vader himself.

"Yes, thank you. Please come in and we'll get started."

Ten hours later Padmé was surveying her new chambers in the luxury apartments that were once known as 500 Republica. Her own Senatorial apartment was not far from where she now stood, but this was not merely one of the apartments in the building, it was the penthouse apartment, and as such was even more spacious and luxurious, and probably cost thirty times as much. There were ample furnishings, which she suspected were made of real wood rather than synthetic materials. The carpets were thick and lush, and she noted that instead of vid-screens there were now holo-displays. She wondered if that was original or if Vader had ordered the replacements made since her actions on board the ship. Fear of Vader could certainly motivate techs to work fast enough to make the conversions in the time it had taken them to get here. For the moment she was alone, Vader had gone to deliver his reports to Palpatine, and had told her that in all likelihood he would be gone for some hours. In the meantime she had explored her new abode and done her unpacking. The décor was surprisingly tasteful, she had half expected everything to be painted black and red, but instead found a far warmer colour scheme of russets and browns. Leading away from the main area, which was divided into kitchen and living spaces, there was one bedroom that was obviously intended for her, it already had two closets full of dresses and a third empty one to accommodate what she had brought with her. Off of that was a private fresher. The second door was only recognisable as a door because it was recessed into the wall. Otherwise it was totally blank, and quite immovable, and Padmé wondered if it was simply there to drive an intruder crazy trying to find out what was behind a blank wall. The third door, however, proved by far the most interesting. It led to what was obviously Vader's study. It was dominated by a huge desk atop which were stacked numerous datapads that probably contained work Vader had yet to do. Behind the desk was a high-backed chair made of solid, dark wood that seemed to have no cushions on it at all. The walls were lined with shelves, some of which contained datacards and crystals. Others contained small statuettes of various designs and styles from the abstract to the reproduction of living beings. Another shelf contained a rack of silver cylinders that she recognised as lightsabers. Darkly she wondered whether they were his or whether they were grisly trophies from the many Jedi he had killed. Deciding to find out, she walked over and picked one up. Turning it in her hands she found the activation stud and pressed it. The blade that sprang to life with the distinctive _snap-hiss _was ruby red. His blade then, for no Jedi that she knew of had ever carried a red lightsaber. For several long moments she stared at the glowing blade. Who knew how many Jedi this weapon had killed, how many innocents? It was fitting that it should be red, for it was certainly blood-stained. She did not even contemplate trying to use the weapon to escape. Firstly she knew that it would doom her family and her planet. But even if that were not the case, the fact that Vader left them out in the open like this indicated that he did not believe that providing her with such weapons would allow her to escape her captivity, so she did not bother, simply extinguishing the weapon and replacing it on the shelf. Finished with her exploring, although the locked door still intrigued her, she sat down and flipped on the holo-viewer, looking for something interesting to watch while she awaited her husband's return.

Meanwhile Lord Vader knelt before the throne of the Emperor, his masked face bowed in deference to his master.

"Master I have quelled the uprisings on Chandrila and Bilbringi. Our patrol circuit also brought us into contact with three more Rebel fleets, which we despatched with ease. We also tracked down three more Jedi, tracing them to remote Outer Rim worlds, where I killed them personally. However we have made no further progress in locating hidden Rebel cells on any other worlds. The Rebels we managed to capture either knew nothing or committed suicide before they could be forced to talk."

His report was bare-bones; Palpatine already had more detailed written reports should he wish to have more substance on any of the incidents Vader had just mentioned. That did not seem to be necessary, however.

"You have done well, Lord Vader. Rise and face me."

Vader obeyed his Master.

"Tell me how your marriage is fairing. I must confess that I had expected your union to bear fruit by now."

"Master I have been occupied with the missions you have presented me with. Besides which, Senator Amidala does not wish for me to share her bed."

"Lord Vader that is most ridiculous. Her wishes are not paramount, the good of the Empire is! In order to ensure security, there must be an heir apparent to each station in the upper chains of command. Your offspring will be the next generation of Sith, and we must secure that, to ensure that the people are familiar with their new overlords by the time it is their turn to rule."

Vader said nothing, neither acquiescing nor objecting, but mentally he was revolted. He could not explain why either, but the idea of taking the Senator by force just seemed wrong. He could not explain it, not even to himself, but he sensed that it was important. Palpatine, however, must have taken his silence for acceptance, for he dismissed him.

"Take a few days leave, Lord Vader, I shall send for you at the end of the week. By then I expect you to have made some progress in this matter."

Vader bowed and strode out of the throne-room, past the crowds of toadies and courtiers that daily sought audience with the Emperor in order to curry his favour in some way or another. As he walked, however, he contemplated his new orders, orders he already knew he would defy, he just did not know why. That was the most frustrating thing, he felt the need to protect the Senator from harm, of any sort. She did not know it, but had she been anyone else, she would already be dead several times over just from the accusatory and probing commentary on his work that seemed never-ending. He had a great deal of difficulty reining in his temper sometimes, which was why he frequently preferred it when she did not speak at all. Yet he could not deny that he felt something for her. He just could not put a name to it. He was too cold, too far gone, to recognise love for what it was, so he continued to wrestle in silence to find the explanation for his undeniable feelings.

By the time he returned to the chambers he shared with his wife it was well after midnight. He slipped in silently and, like a moth to the flame, he was drawn to her bedroom. Opening the door silently, he walked over to the bed and gazed down hungrily at the sleeping form of his wife. Involuntarily his right hand reached out to touch her. It stopped, however, mere millimetres short of caressing her creamy smooth cheek. His eyes moved back and forth between his black-leather gloved hand and her soft, pale skin. Then he withdrew his hand. He knew she could never come to care for him, and that knowledge left him empty inside, although he could not say why. Turning, he exited the room and opened the door that Padmé had previously been unable to pass through to reveal a second bedroom. He entered, doffed his robes and mask and climbed into bed. When he fell asleep, instead of seeing in his mind's eye the faces of all those he had killed, he instead saw Padmé's face, although she whispered the same condemnations that his usual ghosts did. Coming from her lips, however, those words cut him to the core, and his sleep was fitful at best.

* * *

Good? Bad? Please review and let me know! 


	3. Empire Day

For disclaimers, warnings and pairing notifications, see chapter 1.

Author Note: Happy Valentines Day, everyone! In honour of this supposedly couple oriented day, here is a chapter in which I have done something previously quite unthinkable: fluffy Vader! Please try before you judge, I think it is pretty okay. As usual many thanks go to all my reviewers, and to my hard-working beta Ten no Kasou. And now we turn to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

* * *

Her first imperial function, Empire Day, the founding date of the First Galactic Empire. It was everything she had feared it might be, gaudy and overwhelming in its scale and grandiosity. The room was decorated in red and gold, with enormous banners bearing the rayed sun emblem of the empire in gold on black backgrounds. The room was the size of a small warehouse, with a dance floor at one end and tables filling the rest of the open floor space. Along one wall was a long bank of tables that held snacks of various sorts. The guest list was filled with sycophants of the Emperor and Vader and the numerous other important officials present from Sector Moffs to Fleet Admirals and their assorted hangers-on. The politicking was orders of magnitude worse than anything she had ever seen at the events hosted by and for the Senate. 

She did acknowledge that there was a certain entertainment value in the outrageous outfits that were being worn all around. The civilian functionaries of the Empire seemed to have as much of a notion of what clothing, hairstyles and make-up suited them as blind Gammoreans. Then again, she could hardly criticise. She had dressed deliberately provocatively, knowing that as the wife of Darth Vader she was as untouchable as if she had a deadly contagious disease. Her dress was composed of a black synth-leather corset that was daringly low in the neckline and a full-length skirt that was black with scale patterns worked onto it in and ivory colour. A black choker encircled her neck, with a large obsidian floral design nestled in the hollow at the base of her throat, and black synth-leather fingerless gloves reached up to the middle of her upper arms. Completing the ensemble was a silver double headband that crossed her forehead just below her hairline, holding back whatever hair was not gathered up by the thick braid that fell down to the small of her back. She had eschewed earrings, and wore only light make-up, except for the soft pink lipstick she had applied.

The effort of getting herself dressed up like this, and the dignity it was costing her to do so, were probably worth it for all the admiring glances she was getting, not to mention the disappointed looks that passed across male faces as they saw who she was with and deduced who she was. Vader loomed next to her, tall and imposing as ever in his black robes and white mask, laying claim to her by his mere presence, and by the fact that she was on his arm, a courtesy she was surprised to discover he knew. True to his word, given so long ago that she had almost forgotten about it, Vader had never forced himself on her, but he also never gave any sign that he was remotely attracted to her. Soft words between them were few and far between, arguments were far more common, and he never seemed to express any desire for her, although to be fair, he could be all but drooling rivers behind that mask and no one would know a thing. Still, it was nice to have her attractiveness affirmed to her, even if she could not act on it.

It was also amusing to watch people's reaction to Vader's presence. Although the room was relatively crowded, she and Vader never had to push or shove their way through to anywhere. The crowd parted before the fearsome Sith Lord like water before the prow of a ship. Even those brave enough to attempt to make conversation with the imposing black-robed figure and his beautiful wife were careful to stand a respectful distance from the couple. Vader was, predictably enough, not much of a conversationalist. He spoke only when directly addressed and always used as few words as possible in his answers. Thus it was frequently up to her to keep conversations running during the evening. It was fun, however to watch seasoned fleet officers practically running away from the growling voice and blank face mask when they could find a suitable excuse to take their leave from the couple. The current victim of Lord Vader's scare-tactics was the Sector Moff for Farlax, an odious little man named Gentrane, who's short stature and slender build might have made him appear almost child-like, were it not for the vicious scar that ran down the left side of his face from temple to the corner of his mouth, missing his eye by ,millimetres, a souvenir, he claimed, of an encounter with the main native power of his sector, a people known as the Yevetha. Padmé had seen how he acted with other guests during the evening, with all the arrogance of a Hutt, and about as much politeness as an enraged reek, but with Lord Vader standing there in silence like some sort of dark god, the man was quite literally shaking with fear. She tuned back into the fearful man's monologue to the silent Sith Lord.

"The Yevetha are stubborn, my lord, but they are strong and talented starship engineers. With a proper guard force I believe we could construct several new shipyards in Farlax to augment the shipbuilding capacity of the region. The benefits to our military strength could be…"

Padmé sighed, about to resign herself to another tedious conversation which she had no interest in, but which would be entirely one-sided unless she said something. However Vader suddenly cut across Gentrane's speech.

"I will raise your concerns with the Emperor, Gentrane, but there should be no need for additional guards. Your_ job_," he continued with more bite, causing the man's trembling to increase exponentially, "is to see that the sector is _pacified_ and _obedient_ to the Emperor's rule. If you cannot achieve this job with the same resources that were used to _conquer_ the sector in the first place, then perhaps the Emperor should be reconsidering your position."

Gentrane looked ready to wet himself at the idea that Vader thought his position might need reconsidering. When Vader 'reconsidered' a position he only ever made one kind of 'demotion': from living to dead. Padmé might vehemently disagree with the killing of subordinates for failure, but she could not deny that she enjoyed watching this little man quivering in his boots, especially after some of the comments she had overheard him make about her over the course of the evening, the most polite of which suggested that not only was she Vader's whore, but that she was regularly passed around the crew of the Executor.

"I will leave you to consider your new plans for constructing shipyards in your sector while my wife and I have this next dance."

Padmé was surprised to realise that the song playing through the many speakers mounted discreetly throughout the room had indeed changed to a slow and stately Alderaanian waltz. The crowd parted as soon as the intention of Lord Vader was understood, allowing them to sweep away from Gentrane in a stately manner, leaving him to watch their departure with a mixture of relief and trepidation. When they reached the dance floor, the crowd vacated it out of curiosity. No one had ever seen Darth Vader dance before, no woman had ever had the courage to ask him before. With the floor clear, Vader and Padmé stood in its centre, and Padmé was mildly surprised when Vader took the lead in assuming a closed starting position, his right hand resting on the small of her back while his left grasped her right lightly and brought it up to her shoulder level. Automatically she arranged herself to complete the position, her left hand resting on his shoulder and her feet slightly less widely spread than his. They stood thus for a moment, and Padmé suddenly realised just how close they were. No more than an inch of space separated her body from his, a gap she could close without even thinking about it. He was taller than her by enough that she could easily have nestled her head into the hollow between his shoulder and his neck. It was the closest they had ever been to one another and she wondered if he was as affected by her proximity as she was by his.

Before she could take her line of thought much further, Vader found his time with the music and led off. Padmé was caught off guard and had to catch up quickly, but once she did they danced together as though they had been doing so all their lives rather than for the first time ever. All too soon the piece was over and Vader stood back and accorded her the slightest incline of his masked face instead of the quick bow that was the customary close of such a dance. Automatically she curtseyed in response, but her mind was in a whirl of giddy thoughts. Vader led her off the dance floor in a daze as the next piece began and couples moved into the empty space. She sat down automatically in the chair Vader pulled out for her, at least she assumed it was him since the chair appeared to move of its own accord and there were not any other Force-users in the room, and nodded vaguely when he requested that she stay put for a while. She only peripherally registered his departure as her mind was on other more pressing matters. Had she just had a 'moment' with _Darth Vader_? And if she had, what did that say about her? Was she falling for him?

She was interrupted from her thoughts by the scraping of the chair beside her being pulled out and looked up, expecting to see the black robed figure of her husband looming over her. Instead she looked up into the swarthy, serious face of Garm Bel-Iblis, anxiety and wariness evident in his bright brown eyes. Instantly she was apprehensive. Garm was unaware of the circumstances under which she had married Vader, the threats Palpatine had made to encourage her, so as far as he was concerned she was probably the worst kind of traitor imaginable. She braced herself for the blistering condemnation that was sure to be coming.

"Hello, Padmé," Garm said, politely enough, but with a distance in his tone that Padmé had never had directed at her before, which made her heart sink a little, "It's been a while."

"Yes it has, Garm," she replied, politely, but with less distance to her tone than there was to his, no matter his opinion of her, the Corellian senator would always be a man she respected very much, "I have been travelling with Lord Vader and his fleet for the last year."

"Vader," Garm said pensively, as though testing a new word, "Your husband is he not?"

"Yes," Padmé responded tightly.

Garm's eyes flashed at her tone and his expression hardened into outright hostility.

"What I don't understand, Padmé, is why you would give up your principles for that man, if indeed he is a man. No one seems to know for sure. What did he promise you that caused you to run into his arms so eagerly?"

Padmé simply sat there, mute, tears welling up in her eyes. Seeing that she was not going to respond, Bel-Iblis continued, losing his temper at the woman who, in his eyes, had committed the unforgivable and gotten into bed with the devil.

"Did you even regret turning your back on everything you had worked on all your life, all the people you cast to the wolves with that one act? Did it even cross your mind on your wedding night, what others were going to suffer at the hands of your husband? Or were you too busy being his _whore_ to think about that?"

Bail Organa, Viceroy of Alderaan and Senator of the Galactic Republic, watched with apprehension as Garm Bel-Iblis sat down beside Padmé Amidala Vader, onetime senator of Naboo. Organa prided himself on being a man of good judgement, and his good judgement told him that an altercation was brewing here. Bel-Iblis had spent most of the evening near the bar, and Bail had not counted the number of drinks the man had had, but he was sure that it was more than enough to leave him thoroughly intoxicated. He edged closer to the table where his two former friends sat in order to be near enough to hopefully intervene before things got too far out of hand. Unfortunately he was just too far away, and Bel-Iblis lost his temper too quickly, and as a result the accusation that Padmé was Vader's whore rang across the room like a crystal bell, accompanied by the sharp sound of flesh hitting flesh as Bel-Iblis' hand flickered out and caught the beautiful Nubian senator on the cheek. The twin sounds instantly cast a pall of silence in the previously tumultuous area. It was not that the assembled crowd were particularly shocked by the sentiment. Many privately thought similar things, if not even worse of the beautiful former senator, but to say them out loud was dangerous enough. To physically assault the wife of Lord Vader was tantamount to signing one's own death warrant.

Padmé was, for a moment, as thunderstruck as anyone else in the room, if for different reasons. She sat for a moment, a palm pressed to her fast-reddening cheek, staring at the good man before her who had just made such a vile accusation to her face. She was well aware of the rumours concerning herself, and she even expected to hear them repeated by petty, backstabbing little men like Gentrane, but to have it shoved in her face by a man she had once liked and respected, and then on top of that to be physically assaulted, it was simply too much. The tears that had been glimmering in her eyes since the start of Garm's rant spilled over then, and she fled the room, sobbing.

Bail Organa swore to himself and followed hot on the heels of the weeping lady, pausing only briefly to cast a sharp glare at the Corellian senator. No matter his personal opinion of Padmé and her actions, nothing justified stooping so low in public. He pursued her through corridors until he finally caught up with her curled up into a foetal ball on a stone bench in the Grand Hall of the Senate, which was deserted at this time of night. The posture was definitely straining the corset of her dress, and her skirt would likely be a mass of wrinkles when she took it off, but at the moment that was definitely of little importance. Her body shook with the exertion of her weeping, but she was hardly making a sound. For some reason this worried Bail more than if she was bawling her head off. At a loss for what else to do, he simply sat and put an arm around her bare shoulders, offering his support to her. She leaned into him, burying her face in his shoulder and continuing to cry. He did not speak, he just sat, offering her silent comfort. The thought that he was comforting a traitor to the cause that he championed occurred to him, but he pushed it away. These cries were not the cries of a politician insulted in public, nor of a woman humiliated. He was intimately familiar with both. This was something else; some deeper problem had been brought to the fore this evening by what Bel-Iblis had said. He was not Force-sensitive, but his political instincts told him that it was so.

The sound of boots marching along the marble floor of the Grand Hall tore him away from such considerations. Turning as best he could with the now half-asleep Nubian senator still leaning on his shoulder, he felt a flash of fear to see the black-robed figure of Darth Vader approaching them. Although his intentions were strictly honourable, Vader was known for his quick temper and his intolerance of excuses or apologies. The bruising on Padmé's cheek was plainly evident now. What if Vader believed that he had done something to his wife? Vader reached the pair, and stood over them, looking down, presumably at the purpling bruise on his wife's cheek. Bail could almost feel the anger radiating from the Sith Lord, electrifying the air around them. When Vader turned to him, he could not stop the thrill of fear that ran down his spine.

"Thank you, Senator Organa, for taking care of my wife."

For a moment Bail was caught flat-footed. The growling tone was rather at odds with the polite sentiment, but more than that, he never expected Vader, who was reputed as a man of few manners and fewer words, to ever thank anyone for anything. Once he recovered from the shock, however, he replied calmly as ever.

"It was my honour as a friend, Lord Vader."

"Then my wife is fortunate to have such friends as yourself," Vader stated, "I think, however, that you will have to engage her in proper conversation another time."

Bail started to get up, to leave the couple to themselves, as propriety demanded he do. He admitted to himself that he doubted that the Sith Lord was the best choice of comfort for Padmé, even if she had married him willingly, which he now doubted, considering her reaction to Bel-Iblis' tirade, but the fact remained that they were married, and as her husband, Vader had the right to tend to her. He was surprised to discover, however, that Padmé had in fact fallen into unconsciousness. He had not thought she was weeping that hard, to wear herself out already. Not knowing the ways of the Force, it did not occur to him that Vader had once again used a sleep suggestion on his wife. He was, however, shocked once again by the tenderness the Sith Lord displayed as he scooped the beautiful former senator into his arms. Her head rested against his shoulder and her arms appeared to wrap themselves around his neck of their own accord, although the slight jerkiness of their movements clued Bail in to the fact that it was Vader who moved them, not Padmé, and Vader cradled her like a sleeping child with no apparent effort.

"Thank you again, Senator."

This time Bail was unable to reply, his mind still occupied with processing the unexpectedly tender tableau before him, and Vader strode off before he could recover himself sufficiently.

Seething inwardly, Vader strode towards the public docking bays, where an official transport waited to take himself and Padmé back to his residence. He had known what had occurred, of course, and had dealt with Bel-Iblis before going to find his wife. The Corellian Senator would be spending the night in a cell for being drunk and disorderly in public, and would have to pay a hefty fine before his release, but having seen the large, purpling bruise that marred his wife's cheek, he now wanted to go back and do something much more painful and permanent. A variety of scenarios ran through his head, the most merciful of which involved disembowelling the senator and pulling his guts out an inch at the time while the man watched. As he boarded the transport, Padmé still cradled in his arms, his only consolation was that Padmé would probably approve more of the punishment that he _had_ imposed than the one he would now like to.

That thought brought him up short and he began to wonder when it had started to matter what his wife thought of his actions. It had not mattered while he was on the Executor, of that he was sure. There his orders were clear-cut: hunt down traitors and Rebels and bring them to justice using the force that was necessary to do so. He concluded that it was because he had the leeway, he had always tried to be fair in meting out justice off the cuff, and in this case his idea of what was fair happened to coincide with his wife's. Something inside him felt vaguely uncomfortable with this explanation, but it seemed reasonable as he probed it for truth, and the uncomfortableness was not coming from the same place within him that promptings from the Force manifested themselves. It was hardly as though she were exerting mental control over him, he would certainly know it if she were even capable of it, much less if she ever tried.

By the time his musings reached their natural conclusion, they had reached their apartment. Exiting the transport, his wife still in his arms, he crossed the veranda of the apartment, telekinetically opening the door to her bedroom as he did so. As he crossed the threshold to her room, however, she stirred in his arms. Surprised, he looked down, the sleep suggestion should have lasted for longer than this, but she was waking up fast. He deposited her on the bed, and then renewed the sleep suggestion. He briefly considered changing her clothes for her, but decided against such a violation of the Senator's privacy. As he reached the doorway, however, and flicked off the lights, he could not resist one last backward glance at his wife. As it frequently did, the sight of her, beautiful and peaceful, not to mention rather ravishing in her chosen attire for the evening, evoked an emotion he could not put a name to. He recognised lust, but that was simple animal magnetism. He was not, after all, a eunuch, nor was he homosexual, but it was not a problem, he was guided by his instincts, not ruled by them. There was something else there though, something that he sensed was powerful, or had the potential to become so, he could not quite determine which. He wondered what it was, but as usual could not come up with an answer. Instead he turned and departed from the room, heading for his own private sanctuary.

* * *

Good? OTT? Just plain awful? Leave me a review to let me know what you think! 


	4. Tortured Revelation

For disclaimers, warnings and pairing notifications, see Chapter 1.

Author Note: Well, we come to it at last, no not the great battle of our time, that's later :). But this is the moment of what I've come to call the Big Reveal, when the truth of Vader's past, or at least the important part of it is revealed. It's where my story makes its big break away from Shattered, so I hope its not terribly substandard since I'm no longer reworking someone else's story.

* * *

Three weeks later, Vader swept forth from the throne room once more, this time holding himself steady so as to betray no sign of weakness to the assembled crowd in the anteroom. Over a month since his master's command that he rape the Senator, and still he continued to disobey, sometimes finding legitimate excuses why he had no time to take care of the Senator, but more often simply maintaining stony silence while the Emperor lectured him on the importance to the stability of the galaxy of having the line of Imperial succession clear. Now Palpatine had resorted to punishing his apprentice's disobedience. The electrified force-whip was an old favourite of Palpatine's from when Vader was a young boy of just ten years. Back then it had caused him to scream with every vicious stroke to his back. Now he barely grunted with each impact, but that did not mean he did not feel the pain, merely that he had learned greater self-control. Palpatine knew that too. He felt the trickle of blood, warm and sticky down his back from some of Palpatine's more vicious strokes, but he was confident that he would be able to reach his private bedroom before any signs became visible that he was wounded in any way.

He wondered briefly what Senator Amidala's reaction would be if she knew that he, the man who she despised more than any other save perhaps Palpatine himself, was taking vicious beatings to preserve her honour. He resolved just as quickly, however, to keep it a secret. The most likely recourse was that she would advocate that he sleep with her to spare him any further suffering, because she showed compassion for everyone, even for him whom she despised. No one was beneath her notice or deemed unworthy of her attention. It was one of the things about her that fascinated him. He did not want, however, for her to compromise herself merely to spare him a little pain. Pain and he were old friends; he could get along just fine with it. After all Palpatine needed his prime enforcer too much to kill or permanently incapacitate him.

A disturbance in the Force brought him out of his contemplation and quickened his pace as he made for his apartment. Something was happening up there, and whatever it was, it felt _wrong_. When he reached the door to the apartment, he found it ajar, and from within he could hear the humming of an active lightsaber. Flinging the door open, he was confronted with a sight that caused his anger to rise, banishing the pain of his injuries, and his hand to reach into his robes and draw out the hilt of his own lightsaber. Standing in the centre of the living area of the apartment, his sapphire lightsaber activated and held in a ready stance, was a Jedi. The Jedi was a human male, slightly shorter than Vader himself with reddish hair and eyes somewhere between blue and grey. The Jedi had a determined expression on his face as he faced the nightmarish mask of the Sith Lord. Vader swiftly placed his face from hundreds of intelligence files he knew by memory.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi," Vader spat the name with hatred so venomous it could almost be tasted in the air.

"Darth Vader," Kenobi replied calmly.

"What brings you to my home, Kenobi?" Vader asked almost conversationally, "It is foolishness to enter uninvited for anyone, let alone a Jedi."

"I am here to rescue your prisoner, Darth," Kenobi responded tightly.

"Prisoners," Vader responded sneeringly, "Are generally housed in the Planetary Detention Centre, not in my private apartments. So you are either lost, or incompetent."

"I am neither. My intention is to liberate Senator Amidala from your clutches, Vader."

Vader shook his head in mock-disapproval.

"Stealing another man's wife. Is this what the Jedi have come to? At least your other comrades were pursuing more noble goals in life than adultery when I was forced to kill them."

"Senator Amidala is your wife by force, not by choice," Kenobi responded calmly, "Your marriage to her is nothing more than a sham to cover some insidious action. I am setting her free."

Weary of the repartee, Vader issued an ultimatum.

"Surrender, Kenobi, and I may let you live."

Kenobi laughed bitterly at that.

"Do you honestly expect me to believe that? How many other Jedi did you make that same offer to? And how many of them lived after taking it?"

"None of them surrendered," Vader informed Kenobi coolly, now lighting his own blood-red blade and raising it to a ready stance. Kenobi moved forward and the pair engaged, red blade clashing with blue in a whirling dance of deadly intent attempting to be realised. So engrossed were the pair in their deadly dance, so intent upon one another, that they did not notice the third figure emerge from the bedroom to see what was causing the noise.

"NO!"

The piercing scream brought both combatants up short. Their lightsabers locked blade to blade, both men looked in the direction of its source to find Padmé staring at them, one hand raised to her mouth in horror at the spectacle before her. She rushed over to stand at Vader's side, an action that concerned Kenobi deeply since he was sure that in his anger the Sith Lord might lash out at her simply to deny Kenobi the fulfilment of his objective. She, however, ignored his worried glances at her, her eyes only on Vader.

"Please," she supplicated him softly, her hands gripping his cloak, "Please don't. Let him go, for me?"

Vader struggled for a moment, caught between his master's standing orders to kill any Jedi on sight, and his wife's heartfelt pleading. Feeling the indecision in his posture, Padmé took the final step, laying the last thing she had on the line to save an old and dear friend.

"If you'll let him go, I'll give you myself, whenever you wish it."

The offer was made with quiet sincerity, and Vader was brought up short. How much did this man mean to her? Jedi were forbidden to love, but did she love him regardless? Deciding that if it was that important to her he could grant Kenobi a reprieve this time, after all they were sure to meet again where Vader could kill him with impunity, he stepped back, breaking the lock.

"Go," he said harshly to the Jedi, "Before I recover from the shock of finding you here."

Kenobi looked ready to protest, turning his gaze to Padmé. She, however, shook her head firmly at him. The message was clear, _save yourself_. Very reluctantly, Kenobi extinguished his lightsaber and replaced it on his belt. Vader mirrored his movements. Casting a regretful look at the woman he had come to save and who had instead saved him, the Jedi turned and headed out down the hallway. Once he was gone, and the door was closed after him, Padmé turned to look at Vader once more.

"When…?" was all she could choke out as the reality of what she had just given up came crashing down upon her.

"Not this time, Senator," he replied in a cold, dead tone as he headed for the door that was always locked, "You are my wife, not my whore."

He stopped to look back as he unlocked the door by manipulating the lock mechanism with the Force.

"But do not ever attempt that line of persuasion with me again."

Then he was gone, the door sliding shut behind him, leaving Padmé looking after him in confusion, amazement, relief and a thousand other things that she could scarcely identify. She stood there for a moment, unable to believe what had just happened. Who was she married to really? Because this was not anything like what she had come to expect from Darth Vader. The Darth Vader she knew would not have hesitated in killing Obi-Wan, and would certainly have punished her for daring to interfere. This kind of mercy was unheard of, both in her own experience and in any of the stories she had ever heard about Vader before becoming his wife. She was beginning to wonder if the man performed these little twists and turns just to throw her off. Every time she thought she had the idea of Darth Vader the monster firmly entrenched in her mind he would do something to throw her off, make her doubt her assessment of him just that little bit. And now the incidents were adding up, they were not isolated any more. Their wedding night, Empire Day, the forbearance he extended her in private when she was sure – had seen for herself in fact – that similar criticism from anyone else would have resulted in death, it made her start to wonder about things she had never considered before, things she had never thought to be important before, like who Darth Vader was beneath the mask. How had he come into Palpatine's service? What had his life been like before he was revealed as Palpatine's right-hand man? She resolved to try to find answers, to try to understand the puzzle that was her husband.

In the sanctuary of his private room, Darth Vader bit back a stream of profanity as he pealed off his robes, in some cases also tearing scabs that had formed along his back. He treated his wounds as best he could, using the Force to search out the deepest welts and apply bacta patches to them. Then he lay face down on his bed, his back screaming from damaged muscles strained further from his battle with the Jedi. As he lay there, waiting for the painkillers in the patches to kick in, he contemplated what had just occurred. Never before had he let a Jedi walk away from him alive. If his master ever found out about this then the punishment would be severe. Fortunately there were no witnesses other than Kenobi, his wife and himself. Kenobi was not a problem, he and Palpatine were unlikely to be having cosy chats any time soon. Likewise his wife despised Palpatine and did her best to avoid him, so he did not think he had anything to worry about.

His wife, he wondered what Kenobi meant to her. Had they been friends? Lovers? Did she yearn for the Jedi at night? He would not ask, it was better not to know. He had accepted the fact that in his wife's eyes he would never be anything other than a monster, even if the thought did make him want to howl with grief. He loved her, he admitted that now to himself, but he also knew that he was not good enough for her. Hers was such a bright caring soul, and his was hollowed out, unable to feel anything for her except phantoms and emptiness. Nevertheless there was something, a growing voice inside him that prompted him to try, to attempt to win her affections. He drifted off to sleep, his mind still resounding with questions that he had no answers to.

* * *

The following evening, Padmé sat at the holo-terminal looking in frustration at the blank walls of useless data that shimmered in front of her. She was making good on her resolution to discover more about her husband. The only problem was that he was an official enigma. Whatever past he may have had before he became officially known and infamous was as well hidden as his face was behind that mask. She had spent the entire day sifting through public records of every conceivable sort, but Darth Vader's life seemed to have begun the moment he first appeared at Palpatine's side, as though he had sprung to life fully grown and already possessed of his prodigious talents as a warrior and a Sith. Of course she had little to go on except his name, which could easily be an alias. She had no idea what Vader looked like, what his species was, where he came from, how old he was or anything really. Nevertheless she had persevered in the face of such apparently insurmountable difficulties. His official records name him Vader, so she had checked public registry databases for any name changes, but Vader had apparently never changed his name. Yet there was no record of a Vader ever being born in the Republic, he was not registered in the archives of any of the hundred thousand planets that made up the Republic. She had attempted to trace him back through every conceivable channel, from news archives to birth records to tax registries, and all were infuriatingly blank.

She looked up from her activities as the door opened and Vader entered. She was just about to dismiss him and go back to what she was doing when she noted that his walk was rather less steady than usual. Turning to face him she watched as he virtually staggered across the room, trying to make it to the locked door that led to his private lair, which Padmé had still not entered yet. Seeing that he was not going to make it as his gait worsened, she rushed over to support him. She recoiled slightly, however, when the hand that she put about his waist to support him encountered a patch of wet stickiness on his robes at about waist level. Her fingers were stained red, and she drew the obvious conclusion.

"What happened?" she asked, concern welling up in her, even as a small part of her whispered that he did not merit her concern.

"Master wasn't pleased," his voice was thin and raspy, and this close she could now hear his very ragged breathing.

"You need a healer!"

Vader shook his head.

"It's nothing," he ground out, "Just a few scratches."

She then realised that she could not get out to summon a healer anyway without Vader's access codes for the communicator or the door.

"Let's get you on the bed, and then we'll see about treating those 'scratches'."

Vader's mask turned partway towards her, and she presumed that he was looking at her from the corner of his eye.

"The floor and I are already old friends if necessary Senator."

It was the first joke she had ever heard him make, and she laughed from the simple shock of it more than from actual amusement, although in retrospect it was fairly funny. Vader attempted to laugh too, but all he could manage was a few wheezes that were quickly interrupted by a fit of coughing. With great difficulty, she half supported, half dragged Vader to her bed and laid him on it.

"Not quite the state in which I hoped to enter your bed for the first time, milady," he rasped, and she stared. Who was this person, and what had he done with the real Lord Vader? Vader never made jokes, and now he had made two in the space of five minutes. Perhaps he was suffering from delirium because of the pain of his injuries. Then she started to arrange him on the bed so that she could remove his robes and reach whatever injuries lay beneath. When she reached up however to push back his cowl in order to more easily remove his outer robe, however, he grasped her wrist.

"Don't," he said softly, but then his grip slackened as he succumbed to unconsciousness or death, she was not sure which. She continued her work, loosening his belt and pulling it out from around him, tugging off his boots and laying them aside. Then came the part that she was secretly dreading. Steeling herself, in one swift movement she pushed back his cowl and removed the chalk-white mask. What she saw shocked her beyond all measure, and the mask slipped from her frozen fingers to clatter against the floor. She had prepared herself for a monstrous visage, either of some nightmarish non-human species or cruel disfigurement. She had steeled herself to find the ruin of a sentient hiding beneath the fearsome mask. None of these would have surprised her as much as the real face of Lord Vader did. It was neither monstrous nor hideous nor disfigured, but entirely human and entirely whole. In fact his face was rather handsome with rather pale skin and radiation bleached blond hair that was long enough to show a distinct curl. His eyes were closed, so she could not tell their colour. What shocked her, though, was how young he looked. He could not be more than perhaps twenty one at most, almost four years her junior. For a long moment she stared at the true face of Darth Vader. Then she recalled the reason that he was laid out and unmasked before her, and she set her questions aside and went to work. She stripped him down to his underwear, which she was amused to note was as black as his outer robes. She wondered if he even knew the meaning of the word colour. At first glance his wounds, while shocking, did not seem to be bad enough to induce the state of near collapse that he had walked through the door in. There were shining burn marks running down his sides and a single long, slender, shallow wound that looked as if it had been made with a blade of some sort running horizontally across his upper chest, just below the level of his heart. She got the med-kit that was stored in her fresher and cleaned the cut before applying bacta patches along its entire length. She applied burn cream to the burns on his flanks, and was just about to pull up the covers to keep him warm and preserve more of his modesty when she noticed the red stain spreading wider on the sheet beneath him. With some difficulty since he was rather heavy, she turned him over to lie on his front.

She was unable to restrain a gasp of horror at the sight that confronted her. Vader's back was a mess of gapingly fresh and half-healed wounds, and old scars. In places there were small spots of white, and it took her a moment to realise that she was glimpsing his bones beneath the flesh. Just looking at it made her want to retch. How in the name of the Force had he managed to make it back here from wherever he had been? Any normal being would have keeled over straight away from the pain of the wounds she saw here, and most would have died long before this much damage could be inflicted. She quickly set about cleaning the wounds and applying bacta patches as best she could, using gauze to hold them in place rather than relying on their adhesive since there was so little undamaged flesh between each wound that she was not sure they would hold on otherwise. As she worked, she wondered who would have done such a thing to Vader, who _could_? He was a Sith Lord, and a powerful one at that, she had watched him duel a Jedi Knight to a standstill within two minutes, and knew that he had faced many enemies simultaneously and still emerged victorious. Then she recalled the first words he had uttered on entering the apartment and it hit her, _Palpatine_ was the one so savagely injuring his own subordinate. Palpatine whom he loyally served, whose orders he obeyed unquestioningly, had, for whatever reason, inflicted this monstrous punishment on Vader. Judging by the older scars on Vader's back, this was not the first time he had done so either. She felt a surge of pity well up in her, the combined revelations of his apparent age and his horrific wounding at the hands of his master overcoming, for the moment, her dislike of her husband.

As Padmé finished her ministrations, the questions that she had pushed away while tending Vader's wounds all flooded back to the forefront of her mind. Who was this young man who lived inside the mask of Vader? How long had he really been serving the Emperor? Where had he come from? It occurred to her that now she had far more to go on than she had done during the day if she wanted to know about her husband's background. And she found that she _did_ want to know. She wanted to know how someone so young could be made into a ruthless killer, what influences had brought this young man to believe so fervently in the Emperor. He did not look older than his early twenties, and Lord Vader had been in the public eye for the last five years now, which meant that he was publicly serving Palpatine already in his late teens. And who really knew anything about his life before that? For all anyone knew this young man might well have been raised into darkness by Palpatine his entire life, denied a chance to know the light of truth and true justice. If Palpatine's world were all he had ever known, then it would change so many of her opinions about her husband. After all, could someone truly understand evil if they had never known good? Could they understand that what they were doing was wrong if they knew no other way? Yes, she decided, she did want to know more about the real man she was married to. The only question was whether she took what she needed to find out what she could, or whether she waited until he woke up and tried to talk it out of him then.

In the end she decided on a compromise. She did not want to snoop out all of Vader's secrets, she wanted him to tell her, to trust her with it, but equally she did not wish to be stonewalled on the subject. So she decided that she needed a starting point, something to set the conversation in motion. That thing needed to be both substantial and sensational enough to get Vader talking, at which point she thought she had a fair chance of getting him to open up to her. Going over several possibilities for such a juicy bit of information, one stuck out a mile in her mind. His name. There was no way that Vader was his real name, all the records on Vader began at the same time that he had been publicly revealed five years ago. Before that he must have had another name. If she knew it, it would be the perfect starting point for her inquisition.

The easiest way to get his name would be to get a DNA match on his medical records. Swiping at his dark robes, Padmé's fingers came up stained with blood, which she quickly transferred to an analysis chip. Inserting the chip into the bedroom terminal, she instructed the computer to analyse the blood's DNA, and then search the Republic medical databases for a match. Predictably enough the name Vader popped up straight away. She continued to wait, however, and eventually the holo-terminal spat out another name, a name that shocked her deeply, a name she had not heard in many years now: _Anakin Skywalker_.

Even the shock of seeing Darth Vader's true face could not compare to the staggering revelation of his true name. It changed everything for her, for she knew Anakin Skywalker, had met him more than thirteen years ago, during the Naboo Blockade Crisis. During her flight from Naboo to Coruscant to plead her planet's case against the Trade Federation, they had been forced to set down on Tatooine to attempt to repair their damaged ship. He had been a slave working in one of the many junk-shops that existed on the planet when Padmé first saw him, and she had been shocked to learn of his status as a slave, and more surprised still by his vehement denial of her pity for his lot in life, declaring that slave or not he was a person and his name was Anakin. It had been the start of an all too brief friendship as Anakin agreed to help them secure the parts they needed by entering a pod-race in the hope of winning. She had been sceptical that a nine-year-old could achieve such a thing, and had made no secret of her scepticism. But he had proved her wrong, triumphing in a sport that humans were normally incapable of competing in at any age. In the process he had demonstrated his prodigious latent talent with the Force, a talent that had prompted her Jedi bodyguard, Master Qui-Gon Jinn to go to great lengths to secure Anakin's release. He travelled with them to Coruscant, and on the journey they had talked together about many things. She had discovered that Anakin was very worldly for his age. In fact some of the things that Anakin knew and recounted with absolute candour were enough to make her blush, as was the depth and variety of swear words he seemed to know. Nevertheless he had had a good heart, and she had warmed to him. Her liking of him had been increased significantly when she had finally revealed her true identity as Queen of Naboo and he, although hesitant at first in awe of her position, had declared that to him she would always be Padmé first and Queen of Naboo after that. Then the final action that had sealed Anakin's place among her list of friends, even though they had known one another a week at most, was when, in the thick of battle, he had been cast into space in a starfighter on auto-pilot and, in a situation where even a grown man might well have panicked and fled, had instead kept a cool head and personally destroyed the Trade Federation flagship, deactivating the entire droid army that was planet-side and saving the planet from further death and destruction. This last action in a long string of impossible feats that the boy had accomplished on instinct also brought him to the full attention of others, specifically the Jedi Council. Although they had initially refused to train him, after seeing the sheer power he wielded, they agreed that he should be taken in by the Jedi Order. Untrained power of that magnitude could be dangerous, both to Anakin and to those around him. Obi-Wan Kenobi, newly Knighted after he had defeated the Zabrak Sith although he was aggrieved by the death of his Master in the same duel, was asked and accepted responsibility for Anakin. The two, who had both loved Qui-Gon as a father figure, the one for many years and the other for as long as he had known the man, bonded fast to one another, and in the week before their departure from Naboo they had been nigh inseparable. It was one of the reasons she had become friends with Obi-Wan in those early days, it had been virtually impossible to get one without the other. Then they had returned to the Jedi Temple, one to begin his life in the Jedi Order, the other to take his next step in that life.

Two weeks later Padmé had received an anxious call from Obi-Wan asking her if she had seen Anakin or heard from him recently. Curious, she had learned that barely a week after enrolling in the Temple, Anakin had disappeared without trace. He had apparently taken nothing with him except the clothes on his back. The Jedi Order suspected kidnap, Anakin was known to have spent a few nights wandering the streets of Coruscant, an activity that neither the Council nor Obi-Wan had yet got around to telling him was forbidden, but just in case he had run away himself they were checking all likely places he might go. She assured the Jedi Knight that she had not seen or heard from his Padawan since they left Naboo, but promised to let him know if she did hear anything. He had been most grateful to her for her promise of assistance. The next day Queen Amidala had announced the news that one of Naboo's recent heroes was missing and appealed to her people to keep an eye out for him, both on planet and in any travels they might undertake. The search conducted by the Jedi, which spanned the Republic, lasted two years. Obi-Wan himself received permission to continue his private efforts for a third year and she had worked tirelessly with the young Knight in that year to aid the search. However after that time, with no trace of the young man having been found, the Jedi saw no option but to declare Anakin dead. One of Padmé's last acts as Queen of Naboo was to commission a monument in honour of Anakin, a life-size granite statue of the boy modelled on holograms donated by the Jedi Temple from his record of entrance. As far as she knew, no one had ever heard from Anakin Skywalker since his disappearance from the Temple, and now she knew why. Palpatine had obviously kidnapped him from the Jedi Temple, imprisoned him and trained him as his Sith apprentice for the next eight years before revealing him as his enforcer and trusted right-hand man.

Her hatred of Palpatine grew. Not only was he a cruel and calculating tyrant, but now it appeared that he was responsible for the disappearance of an innocent child, the corruption of that same child into the being now known and feared across the galaxy and judging by the old wounds on Anakin's back, probably a good deal of torturing of that sweet young boy as well. Tears glimmering in her eyes, she went over to the bed and sat down next to the unconscious form of her onetime friend, looking down sadly at the face that even in sleep looked harsh and devoid of innocence. She wept then, great, wracking sobs, both for herself and for Anakin, for the young boy who had been twisted beyond all recognition, and for the loss of a friendship that had been dear to her, even in all the years she had thought him dead. Finally exhausted by the swell of her grief, she slumped over and fell asleep right there on the bed, next to a man she had once feared to be in the same room with.

Darth Vader woke slowly, which was unusual for him, normally he made the transition from sleep to consciousness instantly. He blamed his sluggishness squarely on the latest punishment he had received at the hands of his master. He focussed his attention on his surroundings, and was puzzled to discover that everything was white. Then his mind kicked in and he realised that he was face down on something, and that that something was a pillow. Alarm bells started to go off in his head, he had no white pillows in his private chambers and his mask was not on his face. Where was he? And if he was not in his private rooms then who might have seen his face? Turning his head from one side to another, he vaguely recognised the décor of the room he appeared to be in, although he could not recall for a moment exactly where he had seen it before. Then it hit him; this was Padmé's room. It looked different with the lights on and the blinds drawn. Normally he only came in here at night, when it was pitch black, or in the morning when it was lit by the windows. He turned onto his side in an effort to get up. He needed to get out of here before Padmé could see him.

He turned over, carefully so as not to jar too badly the wounds that were on his back, and started in surprise, and not a little fear. Next to him, her beauty only slightly marred by the obvious signs of crying, was his wife, half slumped on and off the bed, the regular rise and fall of her chest suggesting that she was very much asleep. He marvelled for a moment at the compassion of a woman who would surrender her own comfort merely to accommodate someone she hated with a vengeance. Then he decided that such compassion was unnecessary. He rose, making heavy use of pain-suppression techniques he had learned as a Sith to prevent himself from keeling over on the spot. He was glad that his next audience with the Emperor was not due for a week. It would take him that long to fully recover, just in time to receive a new set of scars for his back. He found his robes piled carelessly at the foot of the bed, his mask tossed carelessly on top of the pile. He dressed himself, but left the mask and gloves off and the cowl down. Then, using the Force, he lifted the Senator gently from the bed, suspending her in mid-air with a thought, while he telekinetically stripped the bed, keeping the sheets and bedding as taut as possible the whole way through so as to avoid unnecessary noise. He pulled out clean sheets and bedding from the relevant compartment of the large armoire that accommodated the Senator's extensive wardrobe, and used the Force to make the bed, again trying to ensure as little noise as possible. Finally, when all was done, he brought the Senator gently down, but into his own arms rather than directly onto the bed. She was slight enough that her weight caused him no trouble whatsoever, even in his injured state, and for the first, and probably the last time in his life, Vader had the distinct pleasure of tucking his sleeping wife into bed. He stood for a moment after flicking off the lights, wondering at the many mysteries and powerful forces that were centred around this tiny woman before stalking out, in search of the greater solitude of his private chamber. He never noticed the glowing holo-terminal, or the two names that hung, suspended in mid-air there.

* * *

So, shocking? Predictable? Just plain bad? Please leave a review and let me know! 


	5. True Lies?

For disclaimers, warnings and pairing notifications, see Chapter 1.

Author Note: This author note must begin with an apology to Shina937, who was apparently offended that Bail was 'caught flat-footed' in chapter 3. How exactly this could be offensive, I'm not sure. As far as I'm aware, it's just an expression, like being 'caught off guard' or similar. Perhaps this expression has connotations in another culture that I'm not aware of? In any event, I apologise, truly no offense was meant.  Now that that painful duty is out of the way, I'd like to give a big 'thank you' to all my reviewers, you guys are absolutely the best, because, between you, for the last chapter alone you've given almost as many, or in some cases more, reviews than I've gotten for whole other stories! Such a great response really does encourage me to keep writing, and this is going to become particularly important now, because as of this chapter, I have exhausted all my pre-written material. The next chapter is hardly begun, although I have a good opening for it on paper (screen?), so thank you all for keeping me on my toes with this story! Now on with the show, and that confrontation that all of you were predicting in your reviews is upon us...

* * *

For the second time since her marriage, Padmé woke, and, on finding herself alone in her own bed, momentarily wondered if the events she recalled from the previous night were in fact some bizarre dream her subconscious had dredged up from who-knew-where. Then she had recognised the truth of the matter by the manner of her dress, which was identical to that of her memories. This time it was the still active holo-terminal that caught her eye in the darkness and she knew, even though she was too far away to read the display that hung in the air, that it still showed the information that had suddenly turned her world upside down, and that like last time, the events she recalled from the previous evening were entirely real. Suddenly concerned, she leapt out of bed and went in search of her husband, not even bothering to change out of the very rumpled clothes she had slept in. A thorough search of the apartments, however, yielded no clue as to his whereabouts. The only place she could not look was in the room behind that infuriatingly locked door. She had examined the door in minute detail, but it was as blank as the wall next to it, with no visible means of unlocking or opening it. If it were not recessed into the wall, and if it were not undecorated durasteel, she would probably not even have realised that there was a door there until she saw Vader – no Anakin – pass through it for the first time after his duel with Obi-Wan.

Frustrated, she went back to her own room and showered and dressed herself before returning to the main room. As she sat and contemplated the blank door, she privately admitted that she was afraid that Vader – no Anakin – had crawled into his private lair and died, and not just because this would mean her remaining here for the rest of her natural life. She wanted him to survive, to speak to him, to know why he pretended not to know her, why he had never tried to contact anyone from his former life, what he had suffered at the hands of Palpatine. All these questions and a thousand others blasted through her mind as she stared at the infuriatingly immovable obstacle in her path. She was therefore understandably surprised when the main door to their apartments swung open and Vader – no Anakin – strode in, looking as imposing and intimidating as ever and showing no sign whatsoever that he had spent yesterday evening grievously wounded in her bed. His mask was firmly in place, and his robes looked fresh and new. For a moment he simply stood there, regarding her quite inscrutably, and she returned his stare as she considered what to do or say. 'How are you feeling?' did not quite seem appropriate between them.

"You don't have to hide from me, not anymore."

Forever afterward, she would not be able to work out what had made those her first words. They were certainly part of her planned conversation about his past, even from before she knew anything about his true identity, but she had originally thought to try to get him to remove his mask after a lengthy build-up. He, however, continued to stand there mutely, still watching her, she presumed, although as always she could not be entirely certain. Thinking that perhaps he had not understood her meaning, she gestured towards his face.

"Your mask, I've seen what is underneath it. There is no need for you to wear it around me."

Vader watched her silently, wondering where this was going. She had never asked him before to take off his mask, he knew that it had always intrigued her, what might lie beneath the chalk-white face he exposed to the world, but she had never found the courage or the inclination to attempt to satisfy her curiosity. Then too it was much easier to hate a faceless enemy, which was what he was to her. Deciding to humour her, since there was no harm in revealing what was already revealed, he stepped all the way into the apartment, and waited for the door to swing shut before reaching upwards and pulling back the cowl that covered his hair and pulling off the mask to reveal his true face to her. He watched her reactions, both physical and mental with a mixture of trepidation and amusement. For weeks he had wondered what she would make of him if he were ever to tell her about himself, now he was seeing some indication of what it would be like to bare himself to her. He noted the muted surge of surprise that told him his appearance still shocked her, but it was not as great as it undoubtedly would have been on the first revealing. He felt anger, again somewhat muted, which he put down to her finally being able to get a look at her enemy. But puzzlingly enough the strongest emotion amongst the swirl that seeing his face had evoked in her was pity. Why would she pity him for his appearance? Or was it something else she pitied him for? He could not pin it down.

For her part, Padmé was yet again shocked, this time by his eyes. The Anakin she remembered had very bright cobalt-blue eyes. Now, however, his irises were a bright, almost livid, yellow, like the eyes of a poisonous serpent. She wondered what had caused the change. Otherwise she noted once again how handsome he was, and how young, and a part of her heart ached for what he had lost, what had been taken from him. She knew there was no restoring his innocence. That had been taken from him long before she ever met him by the life of slavery, but she wondered if she might not be able to restore his goodness, that light that had shone so brightly in the nine-year-old boy she had known, but which Palpatine had snuffed out by his evidently not-so-tender ministrations. She owed the attempt to the memory of her friend, even if it turned out that that person was gone forever.

"Why, Anakin?" she asked the question softly, almost sadly.

"My name is Vader," the statement was not harsh, but it was definite. It was also unexpected, and Padmé, caught off guard, blurted the first thing that entered her head.

"What?"

"My name, Senator, you referred to me as Anakin, I believe you are confusing me with someone else," oddly enough he sounded concerned, not shocked or angry, as she would have expected, that she had ferreted out his secret.

"Stop!" she shouted at him, seeing red as even now he maintained his charade, "Stop lying to me! Why must you always lie to me?! I know the truth!"

"Senator, I have no idea what you are talking about."

Although this situation was not entirely new to Vader, the irony of it was never lost on him. He was the Sith Lord; he was the one who was supposed to have the uncontrollable rage, yet here he was being the calmly rational one in the face of her towering anger.

"Fine," she seethed from between clenched teeth, "I'll enlighten you, and then you can let go of your perverse little charade and give me some real answers. I know that your real name is Anakin Skywalker, that you were a slave on Tatooine, that Master Qui-Gon Jinn rescued you from that slavery and caused you to be inducted into the Jedi Order, that we have known each other for more than thirteen years now, counting the break when you were suffering Palpatine's training, that for reasons that completely escape me, you have ignored our previous friendship for the last two years. WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?"

Vader dispassionately ignored her final scream and attempted to process her previous statements. What in the name of Adus was she talking about? Perhaps she had had a psychological breakdown of some kind, the circumstances had pushed her over the edge.

"Senator you are mistaken…"

"I AM NOT MISTAKEN," she shrieked, "I have your DNA evidence!"

"Show me," the command in Vader's tone was unmistakeable, as was the steel in his voice.

Fine, Padmé thought, if he wanted to play it to the last, then she would demonstrate her proof of his true identity. She stormed over to the holo-projector and brought up the two data files, showing the matching genetic codes, and placed the genetic code of the blood sample, also matching, alongside both. Then she stood aside while Vader stood in front of the projector, examining his own file, and the file of this Skywalker. The genetic match was obvious, and the appearance of the young boy was not so different from his own. He could see the close resemblance, and from there it was easy to understand the Senator's anger if she had truly known this boy and thought that it was himself. However he knew something the Senator did not, could not know.

"This is a fake," he told her. Then, as she showed every sign of exploding again, he stood up straight and held up a hand to forestall her outburst.

"Listen to me, Senator, and do not interrupt. The genetic match is true, I accept that, but the data must be substitute for Skywalker's own genetic code. His background does not square with mine. According to his file, he originated on Tatooine, having been a slave there, and was inducted into the Jedi Temple at the age of ten. You claim to have known him, is that story accurate?"

Padmé nodded, wondering where this was going.

"I, on the other hand, grew up here, on Coruscant as a street rat of the lowest levels. My master saved me from that life when I was nine, a full year before Skywalker ever set foot in the Temple. I am not, and never have been, a member of the Jedi Order, and quite frankly I am supremely glad not to have been party to their hypocrisy and that of the Republic."

For several long minutes, Padmé was stunned into silence as she tried to process what she now knew. Vader was not Anakin? But their DNA matched! Vader said it was a fake, substitute data, but who would do such a thing, and why? Vader claimed to have grown up here, on Coruscant, and to have entered Palpatine's service at the age of nine. He could be lying, but again what reason would there be for that? In the conflicting whirl of factual data against Vader's claims, she grasped onto his last sentence, simply to prevent herself from going crazy by following around in circles the conflicts of logic she was now experiencing.

"What hypocrisy?" she finally asked, genuinely curious. Vader had always made it seem as though the rightness of his and Palpatine's cause should be apparent, but had never elaborated on why he thought that. Not, she supposed in a flash of self-honesty, that she would have been particularly open to his explanations before, but now she wanted to know what ideology had been fed to this man for half his life.

Vader snorted, a rather uncharacteristic sound to come from him, but there it was, and his face conveyed disbelief.

"Senator, your intelligence more than matches your beauty, are you honestly suggesting that you are not aware of the myriad failings of your much overrated Republic and their so-called 'Guardians of Peace and Justice'?"

Padmé felt somewhat affronted by that insinuation, even if he had just slid in veiled compliments about her looks and intelligence.

"The Republic had its problems," she defended, "I don't deny that, but there isn't a government that doesn't have problems. And the people were free, that was the important thing. As for the Jedi, they did an admirable job of keeping the peace until your master had them slaughtered like cattle."

"The Republic was a sad and tottering construct that had outlived its usefulness generations ago," Vader countered grimly, "Perhaps if every Senator and elected official shared your ideals then it might have worked, Senator, but unfortunately you were most definitely in the minority. The Republic preached peace and harmony, freedom for all its denizens, but it did not have the power to back up its edicts, even within the territory it claimed to control, let alone any attempt to expand its influence to planets where it did not yet have a presence. Your own planet of Naboo was a victim of this very failing was it not? Corruption, bribery and electioneering kept a small minority in power indefinitely, and that minority did as they pleased, without regard for the welfare of the masses. The Republic could not even order its own capital into its stated aim of a harmonious and peaceful society. I would have envied your slave friend. He may not have had freedom, but at least he knew where his next meal would come from, where he would sleep every night, what work he would have to do in the morning. That security is something I would have gladly exchanged for a totally abstract concept that did nothing to keep me fed, clothed or sheltered at night. Freedom is much overrated, and in its name you, like your fellow Senators, propped up a government that should have fallen centuries ago due to ineffectuality. In some ways I admire you for the strength of our convictions, but in other ways, I pity you for your blindness to the sufferings of society at large so that you and your clique could cling to your precious buzz-word."

Padmé blinked. She had been expecting a long spiel of fanaticism concerning the inherent superiority of Sith ideology, not the vicious attack that Vader had just made on the Republic. What was worse was that Vader's argument was quite rational, and even made sense if one only saw the worst parts of Republican society.

"But you're only looking at the worst that the Republic had to offer," she protested, "Naboo was a peaceful and democratic planet under the Republic, and so were countless other worlds, Corellia, Alderaan, Duros, Mon Calamari, Chandrila, Bothawui, Sullust, Kashyyk and hundreds more…"

"And those planets continue to thrive under the Empire," Vader interrupted, "Societies that function do not require intervention, and so we have not intervened. On the other hand my master has brought peace and prosperity to numbers of worlds that did not enjoy it before: Bilbringi, Antar, Ruusan, Thule, Galantos, Ansion and many more as well. Accept it, Senator, your Republic worked so long as it was made up of societies that had no need for the Republic. The moment a planet had real need of outside intervention, the failings of your government instantly swamped whatever good intentions might have existed. The Empire, on the other hand, is able to get things done without needing the rubber-stamp of a hundred officials before anyone lifts a finger. Problems are alleviated and the needs of the people are placed _first_, rather than an inordinate amount of time being spent worshipping at the altars of democracy and freedom before anything is actually _done_."

Padmé could see that she was not going to win this argument today. Vader had obviously thought long and hard on this matter before now, and he had all the answers, for the moment. Still she was determined to show him that the Republic had had its merits. It had not been perfect, but it had been _fixable_. She would have to think of some way to get Vader to see that. For the moment, however, she moved on to the other great institution of the Republic that Vader seemed so dead against. Whereas before she had been confident that she could argue him around to her way of thinking, now she was almost afraid of what revelations he might have about the oldest and greatest institution of the Republic. Still, she wanted, no, she _needed_ to know, needed to know what half-truths had been fed into this man's mind so that she could broaden his viewpoint, show him the good that he had obviously never seen, or at the least show him that however good his intentions were, the path he had chosen to fulfil them was the _wrong_ one.

"And the Jedi?" she asked, "What do you have against them?"

"Nothing more or less than the fact that they would persecute me and my master on the basis of our beliefs. Is the freedom to believe in whatever philosophy one wishes not something that was protected by the constitution of the Republic, that hallowed document that you so love, Senator? Why then the great caveat? What have the Sith done that warrants persecution without mercy?"

Padmé could not resist the urge to protest, and he had phrased it as a question after all.

"The Sith have been at work for millennia to try to topple the Republic!" she exclaimed, "History is full of their attempts to destroy it and replace it with their own twisted form of government! Yours just happens to have succeeded this time!"

"Ignoring for a moment the fact that you are presuming to judge me on the basis of the actions of my predecessors, something that would surely condemn virtually every sentient being currently alive to death if applied evenly, as all good justice should be, I don't deny that you are correct in principle, but have you read the accounts of those attempted coups carefully? Are you aware of the origins of those great Sith Lords who have come within a hairsbreadth of destroying the government that, as I have already pointed out, has frankly deserved to die for several centuries now? Because if you are, then your double standards are even worse than if you merely condemned them on the basis of being Sith."

"Well, no, I…"

"I thought not," Vader cut her off, "It is not something that is well advertised except within the Jedi Order, and even then only as an object lesson to keep their own members on their straight and narrow path. You see the majority of the Sith Lords that you so fear, Exar Kun, Ulic Qel-Droma, Revan, Malak, Ruin, even Xendor, they all began as Jedi. In truth it is only in the very earliest times, during the Great Hyperspace War, that true Sith Lords, such as Naga Sadow, Marka Ragnos and Ludo Kressh, have made war on the Republic, the rest were Jedi who turned away from their own Order. So if you truly wish to exterminate the source of the coup attempts against the Republic, then I would have thought that the obvious place to begin would be with the Jedi Order, since their discipline is so apparently lacking as to produce such mavericks and rogues."

Padmé was quite open-mouthed by now. She could not believe some of what she was hearing. Somehow, and she was not entirely sure how, even though she could follow quite clearly every step of his argument, Vader had managed to turn millennia of attempted coups by the Sith around and blame it all on the Jedi. And what was worse was that she could not refute any of it. It was all coldly rational, filled with a terrible kind of logic, turning her own ideals back on her.

"But what about the Dark Side?" she questioned uncertainly, after everything else she had heard today, part of her wanted this discussion to end, but again she _needed _to hear Vader's opinions on the subject, "The Jedi say…"

"Therein lies the problem, Senator," Vader interrupted her once again, but she hardly felt even a flicker of annoyance, "What do you know of the Dark Side of the Force outside of what the Jedi Order have to say on the matter?"

"Well nothing, but…"

"Then, again, how can you judge? The Dark Side is nothing more than a ridiculous myth perpetrated by the Jedi to justify their own weakness. The Jedi preach a code of using the Force without emotion, with profound limits on what they may or may not do with it. They speak of the Dark Side as if it is some sort of bogeyman, waiting to lure the weak and the faithless away from their righteous path. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Dark Side is nothing more or less than the acceptance that the Force is most powerful when fuelled by the emotions of the user. You are of course aware that the Jedi deny themselves their emotional freedom. They are forbidden in their code from hatred, from love, from fear, from anger and a thousand other things. They try to use the Force in a vacuum state, when it is through emotions, through powerful passions that the true potential of the Force is unlocked. It is true that such use is dangerous; there can be no denial of that. You need only look at the many examples of fallen Jedi, such as the ones we have already discussed, to understand _that_. It is not a question of the powers they wielded, however, but rather of the discipline they possessed in the wielding. Think of the Force at its full potential like an addictive drug, but at the same time a useful one, such as your ever-beloved caf. It is not inherently detrimental except in large quantities, the only problem is that every use makes you that bit more addicted, that bit more eager to draw more power the next time, and to draw it for ever-smaller things. It is simply a question of control: who is in control? You, or the Force? If you are in control then the power can do you no harm, you wield it as you see fit and then leave it until the next time you need it. If the Force is in control…well you are already acquainted with the results thanks to the many failures of the Jedi in this regard. It is not the Force that is at fault, but rather the lack of discipline of the Jedi, that makes it so dangerous for them. With proper training and careful use, the Dark Side of the Force is no more detrimental or destructive than air or water, and it empowers us to a far greater degree than a Jedi can ever achieve. That is the true reason why they have cast a stigma on us, because we can achieve power they cannot, and that makes them fear us, so they attempted to wipe us out, and when they could not, they placed a stigma on the name of Sith instead, so that we cannot hold our philosophies in peace, but must fight for our very existence. Now we have simply won that battle, and you hold this against me personally."

Now Padmé was truly reeling. In the course of one conversation every belief she had once thought sacred or inviolate had been ruthlessly challenged and challenged by the most coherent of arguments. She had rarely met such well-thought-out debate on the floor of the Senate, and certainly had never expected Darth Vader to be capable of such intellectuality. She could even understand why it was that Vader was so unrelenting in his hunting down of the Jedi, and it was perhaps that which frightened her most, because understanding was halfway towards acceptance. She hardly registered when Vader began speaking again.

"Now that we have concluded our discussion on history and ethics, Senator, I'm afraid we must turn to more pressing business. You will need to pack your things, you are leaving."

The last part of that sentence got her attention.

"_I'm_ leaving? Why? And where?"

"For you own safety, Senator, you will be travelling to Alderaan. Threats have been made on your life because you are my wife. Therefore I am entrusting you to the care of Bail Organa, he is a friend of yours is he not? He indicated as much to me on Empire Day."

"Yes," she said, somewhat confused by the sudden change in the direction of their conversation from debate to practicality, "Bail was a good friend when I was a Senator, but why…?"

"I am afraid there is not time for a fuller explanation, Senator. You must leave soon, I have made arrangements to get you to Alderaan, Organa is aware that you are coming. You will stay there until the danger is over. Pack your things."

The command and finality in Vader's voice was unmistakeable, but Padmé was not willing to acquiesce to such peremptory commands so easily.

"Not until you tell me what this is really about," she said, crossing her arms over her front and meeting his sulphurous yellow eyes with her own steely bright brown ones.

"Now is not the time for this, Senator," his voice acquired a bite that suggested that his patience was getting short. Of course she could not be sure, not having heard his natural voice before yesterday.

"You will be leaving in an hour, whether or not you have packed anything. I will personally see you to your transport and ensure that it departs with you on board. Organa will have you met on Alderaan."

Not waiting for her reply, he stepped past her and into his office, the door swinging shut behind him, and cheeping as the lock engaged. She moved immediately to the locked door.

"You can't treat me like this!" she shouted, pounding on the solid wooden door with a fist, "How dare you do this to me? At least give me a reason!"

There was only silence from within, however, and eventually she ran out of expletives and imprecations to shout. Giving the door one last disgruntled kick, she decided that if Vader was really serious about bundling her off to Alderaan, then she should really pack. Looking at the wall chrono, she saw that she had thirty minutes, so she ran into her room and pulled out a travelling case.

Thirty minutes later exactly, the door to the study opened once more, and Vader reappeared in his full customary regalia, cowl up and mask firmly in place. He stood at the doorway of her chambers as she rushed to throw a few more things into her case. Then she closed and sealed it, and stood beside the bed her arms crossed over her chest once more.

"Are you going to tell me why you're doing this now?" she asked aggressively.

Vader remained silent, standing there like a dark statue. It was like the early days of their marriage again, when he would expect his orders to be followed without question or comment. He had learned, slowly, that comments were inevitable, and that explanations motivated her to do things much more quickly, and with far fewer comments than otherwise. That he was no longer willing to humour her in this way told her that this was big, and yet he was denying her knowledge of it! It was quite infuriating, but there seemed to be nothing she could do about it. He held the power to simply drag her to the spaceport and place her on board a transport and keep her there, and there was not one single thing she could do about it.

"Fine," she muttered rebelliously, then picked up her travelling case and stepped out of the door.

They swept through the empty halls of the Republica Building; now that they were out in the open, Vader seemed in much more of a rush. Vader walked half a step behind her, not letting her dawdle and directing her with silent gestures. Oddly they went not to a public transport bound for the spaceport but for a far smaller hangar in one of the lower levels of the building. Vader directed her to a small two person speeder that was parked there, one of many, stowed her luggage in the storage compartment, and then got in, ordering her to do the same.

They drove at breakneck speeds through the Coruscanti traffic, Padmé buried her face in her hands after the first thirty seconds, sure beyond doubt that they would end up smeared across a large transport or a building. Whatever was going on, Vader was definitely in a rush. She did not look up until she felt their velocity slowing, the wind no longer howled in her ear. When she did, she gasped. They were at a huge ziggurat, a huge and very familiar ziggurat. Five great spires had once towered over all other Coruscanti buildings, rising from this ziggurat. They had been torn down in preparation for the building's impending destruction, but the Emperor had not yet gotten around to completely razing this great symbol of the Republic: the Jedi Temple. They did not, however, proceed directly to the Temple as she had expected. Instead Vader dove to the very base of the ziggurat, and entered a huge venting duct, ignoring her protests that this was suicide. She quit protesting when the venting duct turned out to be a launch shaft with its own secret hangar. The sole occupant of the hangar at the moment was a small skiff, of Nubian design, she noted, although without the trademark mirror finish. Vader brought the speeder to a halt mere inches from the base of the skiff's landing ramp. He hustled her out, only just stopping short of manhandling her personally out of the speeder and onto the skiff. A man was waiting in the cockpit for the both of them. He was of slightly greater than average height, with pale skin and jet black hair and eyes. He wore no uniform, but rather a black jumpsuit, fingerless gloves and a blaster holstered at his hip.

"Senator," Vader spoke for the first time since they had left the apartment, "This is Gann. He will ensure your safe arrival on Alderaan. He will not obey any instructions you give him to turn back, or to bring you back."

The man, Gann, acknowledged her with the barest inclination of his head, so she returned the gesture in kind.

"Her life is in your hands until you reach Alderaan, Gann," Vader said, turning to the man, "Should you fail, _your_ life will be forfeit. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lord," was his even reply.

Vader swept out and Padmé followed him. When they reached the skiff's ramp, however, Padmé found herself unable to continue any further. An invisible wall stopped her cold. Damned Force powers, she cursed. Gann must have had a camera on the boarding ramp, for as soon as Vader stepped onto the hangar deck the ramp began to retract itself. Vader, however, continued to stand there, probably to maintain his telekinetic wall, to ensure that she did not jump ship at the last moment. She was surprised when, at the last moment, Vader raised his hand in farewell. Her own hand rose tentatively to return the gesture, but she was not sure it reached high enough for him to see it before the ramp closed all the way up, cutting off her sight of him. As she felt the familiar shudder of thrusters firing, she picked up her travelling case and deposited it in one of the two cabins, before curling up on the chair in there. Thoughts whirled through her head, both of the ground-shaking discussion that had taken place between herself and Vader, and then of his abrupt despatch of her to Alderaan. Was it significant that he had sent her to Alderaan, to Bail and to the Rebellion?

Vader watched from the top of the ziggurat as the skiff disappeared into the atmosphere, carrying his soul with it. He could admit it now, now that she was no longer with him: she was his soul and he had sent her away. Men like him had no need for souls, he was damned anyway, even if he had argued his case to her barely an hour ago. She had rendered judgement on him in her silence, and that judgement could not have been clearer. Somehow, now, the rightness of his cause seemed to matter less if she did not approve of it. He was hollow once more. He turned back to his speeder, and drove to the Imperial palace.

* * *

Aha! Got you guessing now, don't I? Is Vader really Anakin, or isn't he? Well, yes he is, I'll give you that for free, but why doesn't he remember it? Hmmm, now there's a mystery, one that will be solved in another chapter I'm afraid. So what's the verdict?


	6. Sanctuary

For disclaimers, warnings and pairing notifications, see Chapter 1.

Author Note: Well those of you that wanted an explanation for why Padme had to run from Coruscant in a hurry should be satisfied with this chapter. The debate about Vader's memory is interesting to read in the reviews. I think I may have to lock up my story notes from now on, because one or two guesses have been disturbingly close to what I plan to write. I'm glad that Vader's ideas on the Republic and the Force were well-received by you guys. I was a bit concerned when I wrote Padme's reaction and characterised his arguments as rational and well thought out, in case you all disagreed, but it seems to have worked out well. As for how I came up with that stuff, all I can say is that it's a very rare villain that actually believes he is doing evil. They usually have some justification for their actions, and in the case of the Republic it was easy from the canon to see how it could be argued that the government needed replacing. All that talk of corruption, bureaucracy and so on was like a great big target painted on. As for the Force, much the same process was involved, I just tried to put myself in the shoes of a Sith Lord and say 'Well what would a Sith think about this?' because in canon we really do only seem to get Jedi views on the matter. As for those of you that complained about the cliffhanger ending, I left it there because I wanted the moment when Vader admits the true depth of his feelings for Padme to be memorable, and what better way than to make it the last thing you guys read?

* * *

"Escaped?!"

Palpatine's furious shout echoed from the walls of the audience chamber. Vader did not even flinch from his kneeling position in front of the throne.

"Yes, master," Vader replied, "I returned to find her gone. I immediately initiated a search, which is what delayed my return."

"How very…convenient for you, my apprentice."

"Convenient, my master?" Vader injected the right amount of questioning into his voice. Years of undercover work having schooled him well in the art of modulating his voice.

"Convenient, Lord Vader," the Emperor repeated, "Convenient that your wife should disappear at the very moment I order you to bring her before me. Convenient that it should occur at the very moment that I have planned her demise, since she refuses, and you refuse to force her, to bear the heirs this Empire requires. Tell me, apprentice, have you gazed into the future recently."

"No, my master, my meditations have been on the present, on the problem of the Senator and how to convince her to acquiesce to your wishes."

"You disappoint me, Lord Vader," the Emperor said softly, and Vader steeled himself, knowing what would come next. He was not disappointed as he felt the mask telekinetically ripped from his face. His robes too, fell away from him at the wave of the Emperor's hand. The stink of ozone filled the air as blue lightning erupted from Palpatine's fingertips, striking his back, incinerating the bacta patches there, opening the wounds up and compounding them with burns. At least he would not be bleeding to death, the currents arcing across his flesh cauterised the wounds. His teeth clenched and he did not cry out, nor did he waver from his kneeling position. At length the onslaught stopped, but Vader did not move, to do so would be to invite further retribution.

"You will seek out your wife, and you will execute her as a traitor, Lord Vader," Palpatine ordered him, "This mission will be undertaken by you personally, your blade will take her life, and you will lay her corpse at my feet with your own two hands. When it is done, you will be punished for a full day for your disobedience and laxity. For every additional month that your search takes, I will extend that punishment for another day. Do you understand?"

"Yes, master," Vader intoned, already knowing full well that he would never complete this mission. He would die first.

"Then go, and do not disappoint me further, or I shall find myself a new apprentice."

Vader rose, dressed himself and bowed before stalking out. He needed to make it to the sanctity of his apartments before he passed out from the pain. This time there would be no gentle hands to dress his wounds.

* * *

Padmé stepped off the skiff, onto Bail Organa's private landing pad at the Royal Palace in the city of Aldera. She was greeted by the senator himself.

"Padmé! You're alright, you're alive!"

"Of course I am," she replied, somewhat perplexed as the usually decorous senator of Alderaan embraced her in relief then proceeded to hustle her off the landing platform and into the hallways of the Royal Palace, "Why would I not be?"

"Word of your escape has been blasting the Holo-Net for the last two days. You've been branded a traitor to the Empire, and there's a price on your head. I was afraid you would be intercepted in transit and taken back to Vader and the Emperor."

"What escape?" she asked, now very confused, "I haven't escaped, I was sent here by Vader."

Now it was Bail's turn to be confused.

"By Vader?" he shook his head, "That's not right. It can't be. Vader is in charge of the search for you, he's vowed personal vengeance on you for your treachery. Yesterday he took off with the _Executor_ to Naboo. We're still waiting for news, but my guess is he's turning over every rock on the planet looking for you. Two days ago I got contacted by a man who told me he had broken you out of Vader's clutches, and asking me to take you in. Of course I agreed at once, and he told me you would arrive in two days, by now in other words. And here you are, so he must have gotten you out."

Icy fingers of fear clutched at her heart for the fate of her people, and that overrode everything else for the moment.

"Do – do you think we'll hear anything from Naboo soon?" she asked, somewhat tremulously. After all she had done, everything she had sacrificed to keep her planet safe, it was now enjoying the slender mercies of Darth Vader. She might have discovered another side to the man in the last few weeks and months, but she feared nonetheless, feared that he would not disobey a direct order from the Emperor to lay waste to the planet. He had never disobeyed his master in anything else, nothing, how slender then was the thread by which her planet hung? The exact wording of Vader's orders, and that was what gave her cause for fright.

"There's no way to know for sure," Bail said, not seeing any benefit in giving Padmé false hope that could easily turn into a crushing blow if things went badly, "We'll hear from them when we hear."

Padmé accepted that, mainly because she had to. Bail was right, there was no way to know how things were going on Naboo at the moment. So instead she turned to the other pressing matter that had arisen in her mind from Bail's statement.

"Tell me about this man who supposedly got me out of Vader's clutches. Vader personally escorted me to that skiff, are you sure you didn't talk to him?"

"As sure as I can be," Bail said, "His com-signal scanned as a diplomatic transmission, that was how it got to me. The voice passed a vocoder check, so it was his natural voice, and it sounds nothing like Vader's voice, he identified himself as Anakin."

Padmé clutched his arm, bringing them both to a halt.

"_What_ did he say his name was?"

"Anakin, he didn't give another, which is understandable. He said that he might be interested in further communication, so I've set him up with a com-frequency to leave messages for me at. Totally secure, I assure you. In fact he's used it once already to inform me of the make and model of the skiff you would be arriving, that's why you were redirected here instead of landing at the spaceport."

"Tell me, Bail, what did he look like? It's very important."

"I have no idea," Bail admitted painfully, "The transmission was voice-only, again understandable. Real-time subspace communication is tricky, and difficult to conceal if you talk face-to-face. It's much easier to hide an audio only transmission."

Padmé fought the urge to laugh hysterically.

"Of course it is," she gasped out, "Bail you spoke to Vader. The voice you've heard isn't his real voice. He uses a vocoder normally himself. I've heard his real voice, and they sound nothing alike. Do you still have the transmission, or the message so that I can listen to either?"

She held up her hand, answering her own question.

"No, of course you deleted the records of both for security, didn't you? Take my word for it, you spoke to Darth Vader."

"What makes you so sure?" Bail asked, "Anakin could be anyone's name, but the diplomatic flag is only possible for registered Senators, which Vader is not."

"You don't think Vader could put a diplomatic flag on his transmissions if he wanted? I have a good reason for my suspicions, but I'd prefer to explain it only once. Do you know where Obi-Wan is? Can you get hold of him?"

"No, I can't get hold of Master Kenobi directly," Bail told her regretfully, "But he's due to stop in sometime in the next few days, according to his last communiqué. He's been working to find a safe refuge for the surviving Jedi, somewhere they can hide and train more recruits. I think this last run he was going to look at several likely spots, Onderon, the Roche Asteroid Cluster and a couple of previously uncharted planets in the Cron Drift. His last message was just before he entered that region, three week ago. He planned to spend a week exploring the nebula and its planets, and it's a fourteen day hyperspace journey, so he should be back soon."

"Can we hold the explanations until then? I only think I can stomach explaining this once."

"Of course," Bail replied, "So long as you can promise that you _will_ explain, and soon. If that really is Vader, then I need to know before I give us away to him."

"I know," she assured him, "I promise that I'll explain, but I'd rather do it with Obi-Wan present. He needs to hear what I have to say. Can we just give him a few days to get back?"

"Of course, in the meantime, we should set you up in seclusion. You are a wanted person right now. You'll stay the night here in the palace, and then in the morning I was thinking perhaps you might be comfortable in the Royal Residence in the Droman lakes? It's very similar to your Varykino Retreat, so I thought you might feel more at home there."

"That sounds wonderful," she said, sincerely, "Thank you so much, Bail."

* * *

"I trust you have found our authorities co-operative, Lord Vader," Queen Apailana of Naboo had never feared for her own existence quite so much as she did in the presence of this Dark Lord of the Sith. The man, if that was what he was, radiated power and barely controlled fury in an aura so powerful it was practically tangible. She knew as well as anyone the stories that surrounded Darth Vader. Now he was on a blood hunt for one of Naboo's most prominent and best-loved public figures. _His wife_, she reminded herself.

"They were most forthright in their assistance, Your Highness. I regret that it was necessary for us to come here, but this _is_ my traitorous wife's homeworld," the menacing growl of the Sith Lord's voice made Apailana shiver, and she made a mental note to ensure medical assistance and counselling for the victims of Vader's questioning upon hearing him characterise them as forthright, "Your personal assistance with files on her former associates was also most helpful. The Empire will not forget your co-operation."

"We are honoured to be recognised, Lord Vader,"

"There are two more matters that I must broach with Your Highness."

"What is it, Lord Vader?"

"Firstly I must ask that you allow a continuing Imperial Presence, so that we may watch for signs that my wife has come here. The fact that she is not here now does not preclude her ever returning."

_They want to occupy us_, Apailana thought, but she could not do anything to stop it, and protestations would only make things worse.

"How large a presence, Lord Vader?"

"I will leave a battalion of stormtroopers stationed at the spaceport. I will also leave a second battalion under your direct command, and would appreciate your deploying them in the best manner to safeguard this planet and watch for my wife or other traitors. I believe your local knowledge will be more useful in this regard than my dictation of deployments on a planet I am hardly familiar with."

_Two battalions? _That was hardly sufficient garrison force for the city of Theed, let alone the entire planet. Not a forced takeover then. Apailana's political instinct told her that something else was at work here. What game exactly was Vader playing? Perhaps he would reveal himself in his second request.

"That seems eminently acceptable, Lord Vader, most generous, even. What of the second matter?"

"I was hoping you would agree to my crew taking shore leave on your beautiful planet for the next three days once they have completed their investigations. They were due for such leave on Coruscant, but with the urgency of my investigations, I was compelled to deny it to them. Would you consider accommodating me in this as well?"

The Queen was quite thunderstruck. What was really going on here? She did not understand, and she did not see how this mild policy squared with what she had seen and heard about Vader before this.

"We…we would be honoured, Lord Vader," she responded weakly

The Sith Lord inclined his head slightly in a gesture of respect.

"My thanks for your time and forbearance, Your Highness," he said, then stalked out without awaiting another word from the stunned and immensely relieved queen.

* * *

That same night, Sabé Ellinai returned home, exhausted by the interrogations she had endured that day. Oh they had been cordial and polite, which was unusual for Imperial investigators, but they had kept her for a full three hours, asking her every conceivable question about her time as a Handmaiden to Queen Amidala, then waiting half an hour and asking her the same full battery of questions again to check that her story was solid.

"Good evening, Miss Ellinai," the unexpected and decidedly male voice that sounded from behind her and to her right caused her to whirl, a vibroblade dropping into her hand from the several she kept sheathed on either forearm. Seeing the black-cloaked figure standing beside her door, her mind instantly screamed threat, and she threw the blade without a second thought. Her shock only deepened when the figure simply raised a hand and the weapon stopped dead, hanging in mid-air between them.

The figure reached up and pulled back his cowl, revealing a young human male, she put his age at about twenty-one, with jet black hair that just brushed his shoulders, tanned skin and eyes that were light brown, but somehow seemed to be intensely coloured.

"I'm sorry for startling you, Sabé."

"Who are you?" she demanded harshly, "How did you get in here? What do you want?"

"You may call me Anakin Skywalker, Sabé, and I got in here by climbing through your upstairs window."

"Anakin Skywalker is dead," Sabé told the man roughly. Had he no respect for the heroes of Naboo? Let alone the sweet young kid she had known personally. Force that kid had been a bright bundle of energy, so young and so full of questions. She had entertained him once or twice in her guise as a handmaiden, and had developed a liking for the young boy. It had been a blow when he had been declared dead; she had really been hoping that he would get a better start at life when they left him in the hands of the Jedi. She had not thought about him in ages, even though she still worked in the palace, where his statue stood in a secluded garden within the complex.

"Yes, he is," the man agreed, "I did not say it was my name, merely that it was what you could call me. Your mistress gave it to me, and so I am using it."

"My mistress?"

"You served Padmé Amidala Naberrie Vader, as her Royal Handmaiden, did you not?"

"I did, what of it?"

"Would you consider returning to her side? As a bodyguard and as a friend?"

"To report on her actions? Her whereabouts?" Sabé accused.

"No!" the man said, his own voice harsh for the first time, "You must tell no one anything about her!"

"I cannot, anyway," Sabé sighed, "I don't know were she is. A good hiding place, I hope."

"If I could tell you where she is, would you go?"

Sabé lifted her chin imperiously, but with hope shining in her eyes. She had missed Padmé since the other woman had been forced into marrying Vader. She did not believe for one moment that the wedding had been anywhere near voluntary, she knew her friend too well for that.

"I would go anywhere to defend my Queen."

"Good," the stranger said, "Then take a leave of absence from the palace, personal reasons. I will ensure an indefinite extension to your leave and arrange transport for you to Alderaan, Senator Amidala is in the care of the Viceroy, Bail Organa."

"How do you know this?"

"I sent her there."

"How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"You don't."

Sabé sighed. It was a risk, to be sure, but it was hardly as though the man was sending her to Coruscant, or into the belly of the beast. She knew Bail Organa by reputation, at least well enough to suspect for herself that the Senator was involved in the fledgling Rebellion.

"I'll do it," she told him. He took the news quite stoically.

"Good, I will leave a message on your home com within the next two days with your flight plans."

He reached into his cloak, and Sabé slid another vibroblade out of her sleeve, even though the first one was still hanging in the air, demonstrating the ineffectuality of throwing another. He produced a datapad, which he tossed in a gentle arc to her.

"For your trouble."

She caught the datapad easily with her free hand, flipped the lid open and studied the small screen. All it held was two numbers, one a six digit number that she recognised as the access code for the account to which she had once directed her pay-checks as a Royal Handmaiden. The other she therefore guessed was an amount, an amount that was a digit longer than the access code.

"I don't want it," she said, offering the datapad back, "I'm doing this for friendship, not the money."

"Keep it regardless, if not for yourself, then think of it as a good contingency fund, just in case."

He turned and made his way towards the staircase at the end of the hall, but she called him back.

"You are _not_ jumping out of my upstairs window. You are leaving out the front door," she told him. He flashed her a small smile as she held the door open for him. Then he pulled his hood back up and walked out, leaving her to contemplate her new assignment. It was only after the door closed that the vibroblade that had hung in the air dropped to the floor with a clatter.

As Vader walked down the road, the smile evaporated from his face faster than superheated water. He reached up and slid the iris-enhancers out of his eyes, revealing the sulphurous yellow that was the mark of a Sith. He had gotten what he came for, the best protection he could offer to his wife. He had read Sabé's file, she would be a skilled and fierce bodyguard if necessary. More than this he dared not do, except to continue the misdirection of the hunt for Padmé. He wondered how long it would be, how long he had left before the Emperor tired of his lack of progress and attempted to kill him. He was still not sure whether he would simply go willingly to his own execution at the end, or whether he would fight his own master, the man who had raised him up from poverty on the streets to greatness. Both had their merits. Fighting meant the possibility of winning, of taking over the rule of the Empire. From there he could reshape the cause, make the transition more palatable for those people who set so much store by 'freedom' and democracy, and maybe, just maybe, Padmé would come back to him, return willingly to his side to help him in such a great endeavour. Execution, on the other hand, would mean release from the whole thing. He would not have to worry about the tension of loyalties to his master and his cause and to his wife, and if he were executed then Padmé would be free to seek out the man of her heart's choosing, even Kenobi, if that was who it was. He would have to meditate on the subject, perhaps the Force would enlighten as to which was the better course of action.

* * *

Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi landed his small starfighter skilfully on the landing pad of the Droman Lake Royal Residence on Alderaan. Quite why he was here, he did not know. Bail Organa, a man he had respected and liked since meeting him nearly eight years ago at an ultimately fruitless peace negotiation between the planet Onderon and its neighbouring moon of Dxun, had requested his presence here at the earliest convenient time. He had therefore delivered his reports on the planets he had surveyed on his latest run to the Jedi Council, or rather the few Jedi Masters who remained and who had reconstituted as best they could the legendary body that directed the Jedi Order, and then flown directly from the Jedi Enclave in the Castle Lands to here.

He popped the seal on his cockpit and climbed out of the small and agile craft. The moment he turned away from the craft, however, the reason he had been asked here became immediately apparent. His jaw was threatening to hit the floor and his eyes to pop out of their sockets, because standing next to Bail on the edge of the landing platform was a very familiar figure. A very familiar figure whom he had last seen when she saved his life in a duel with Darth Vader. Former Senator Padmé Amidala, he refused to think of her as the Lady Vader. He took a moment to steady himself and then made his way over to the pair. He bowed to them both.

"Senator Organa, always a pleasure, and Lady Amidala, a most welcome surprise to see you here."

Bail bowed his head in return, but Padmé threw formality to the wind and embraced him tightly.

"It's good to see you again, Obi-Wan, and under much better circumstances than the last time."

"Indeed. Milady."

"We should go inside," Bail interrupted their reunion.

"Of course," Padmé said.

The trio walked off the platform and through the halls of the residence in silence. Strangely they met no one at all. Obi-Wan knew that even in the Royal Palace, there were staff, handmaidens, housekeeping staff, clerks, secretaries and so on. Here, they ran into none of these, the hallways were completely deserted. Obi-Wan stretched out with his Force perceptions, and discovered that they were the only living people within the complex. He withheld his questions, though, since Padmé and Bail both seemed not to want to say anything just yet. Patience was the soul of a Jedi, and he had ample experience at practicing it. At last they reached a small conference room, filled by a table surrounded by chairs with a holo-projector in the centre of the table. When they had entered, Bail closed and sealed the door behind them. They sat in three of the chairs around the head of the table.

"I suppose you're wondering what this is about, Obi-Wan," Padmé started, to which he nodded, "I'll start by telling you how it is that I came to be here on Alderaan, and then I have a question for you before I finally give the explanation that Bail has been hoping for, for more than a week."

The story of her flight from Coruscant took all of ten minutes, during which Obi-Wan felt surprise growing in him with every word. It was virtually unthinkable that Vader should send his wife into the arms of the Rebellion after the effort he and his master went through to tie the former Senator to himself and to keep her imprisoned there. Something else was at work here, something of profound importance. He was not sure whether it was the Force speaking to him, or whether it was his own gut instinct, but he could tell that it was there.

"Do you think this might all be a ruse, to flush out the Rebellion and the Jedi by tracking your presence?" he asked.

"We considered that, and we checked everything after Padmé insisted that it was Vader who sent her here. Everything she brought, all her clothes, her jewellery, we even did a bio-scan for transmitter implants," Bail told him, "Nothing showed up."

"You said Padmé insists that Vader sent her here. You have doubts?"

"I did," Bail replied, "But they were mostly based on a vocoder check, which confirmed that the voice I was hearing was a natural one. Padmé has since told me that Vader uses a vocoder full time anyway, so now I'm not so sure, but equally I don't see how she can be absolutely certain that it _was_ Vader. That's the explanation she promised me, but she wanted you to be here when she explained."

"Then I'm all ears."

"First I want to ask you something, Obi-Wan, something about what a Jedi can do."

"Then ask," Obi-Wan replied, wondering where this was going. He had a bad feeling about this…

"Can Jedi alter memory?"

The question surprised Bail and Obi-Wan both. Neither could see the relevance in it.

"Do you suspect that your mind has been altered?" Obi-Wan asked in concern.

"Not me," she clarified, "Someone else. Just hypothetically, is it possible?"

"Hypothetically, yes," Obi-Wan sighed, "The Force can achieve many mental feats. The alteration of a memory is difficult, but possible. It depends on the mental acuity of the victim. A person with a strong will would be more difficult to overcome in this regard. Why are you asking me this, if not for yourself then for who?"

Padmé decided to simply drop the bombshell and then go from there.

"For my husband," she told them simply.

There was a full minute of silence after her simple and concise declaration. Then both Bail and Obi-Wan spoke at the same time, their sentiments mirroring one another.

"Padmé!"

"Surely you can't be serious, milady."

She held up a hand to cut off their protests.

"I'm very serious, and I have a good reason for my suspicions. A few days ago I found out who Vader _really_ is, or at least who I _think_ he really is, and you are never going to believe it. I'm still not sure that I do," she admitted.

She took out a small data-chip and inserted it into the reader in the table. The holo-projector mounted in the table sprang to life with the image of a string of DNA. The two men watched as Padmé ordered the computer to search its databases for matches. The computers of the palace complex were linked in to the Holo-Net, so effectively the search would take place in a hundred databases across the galaxy. It was not nearly so quick as it had been when Padmé had conducted the same search on Coruscant, because they were no longer at the hub of the Holo-Net, but it only took thirty seconds for the computer to flash up Vader's public records, the genetic match highlighted.

"Where did you get that DNA sample?" Obi-Wan asked as he watched the computer continue to perform its search for other matches.

"He came into the apartment the night before I left, wounded beyond belief," Padmé answered, "I had been searching for his true identity for a while before that, so I dressed his wounds, took some of the blood and ran an analysis. It's how I found out what I'm about to tell you. I still can't believe that by next morning he looked as though nothing had ever happened."

"Jedi have the ability to suppress their pain, ignore it and to continue to function through it," Obi-Wan told her, "It's a basic skill of the Force, so it's not surprising that the Sith can do likewise."

"You didn't see him, Obi-Wan," Padmé said, her stomach roiling slightly at the memory of the mess that had been Vader's back, "I think even a Jedi would have felt some of that. It was Palpatine, Palpatine was torturing him, and it wasn't the first time either. His back had scars, a lot of scars."

"The Sith are evil, Padmé, it's no surprise that Vader would be treated harshly. But he _chose_ that path."

"Are you sure about that?" she asked softly.

"Yes," Obi-Wan said, "The Dark Side is a choice, it calls out to you, but it isn't natural to channel it. It's far easier, far more natural, to tap the Light Side. Otherwise Bandomeer would have been full of mini-Sith Lords."

"What if he never had the chance to learn the difference?" she asked, "What do we really know about Vader? For all anyone knows, he might have been _raised_ by Palpatine. What then?"

"You seem to know who he is," Obi-Wan replied, "Is this another hypothetical?"

"Not exactly," Padmé admitted, "You'll see."

They continued to wait as the computer churned through information, searching database after database, but eventually the second file came up, just as Padmé knew it would. She watched the men's reactions. Bail showed comprehension, obviously he had already made the connection between the names, otherwise the revelation of Vader's true identity meant little to him. Obi-Wan, however was the same picture of shock and disbelief that she was sure she had been when she first discovered this.

"By the Force, it can't be!"

"The genetic match is exact, Obi-Wan, I think it is," she took a deep breath before saying it out loud for the first time, "Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker."

Obi-Wan could not have felt more pain if he had been pierced in that instant by a lightsaber. His former apprentice, the young boy he had grown to be fast friends with in the wake of the death of his master, was now the slaughterer of hundreds of Jedi, a Dark Lord of the Sith, a monster. Suddenly he felt about a century old.

"Is this Anakin Skywalker significant?" Bail asked, seeing the mingled shock and horror on the Jedi Master's face and the resignation on Padmé's. Padmé could tell that Obi-Wan was too busy dealing with shock, grief and a thousand other things at the moment, so she answered.

"Obi-Wan and I both met Anakin Skywalker thirteen years ago, during the Naboo Blockade Crisis. He was a slave on Tatooine when we crash-landed there. He helped us escape the planet by entering a pod-race in order to win the money we needed to buy parts for our ship. He was all of ten at the time. Master Qui-Gon Jinn contrived to free Anakin because he saw tremendous potential in him and wanted him to be trained as a Jedi. When we returned to Naboo, it was Anakin who turned the battle for us, accidentally flying a starfighter through the battle and destroying the Trade Federation Droid Control ship in orbit with it. After that the Jedi Council agreed to accept Anakin for training, and since Obi-Wan was newly Knighted at the time for his defeat of a Sith warrior, he was assigned as Anakin's master. A week after they returned to Coruscant, Anakin disappeared without a trace. No one ever knew where he went or what happened to him, but I think it's fairly obvious now that we can blame Palpatine for that."

"We failed him," Obi-Wan said, his voice suddenly hoarse, "I failed him. Oh Force…"

"I remember now," Bail said, "Is this the boy that the Jedi mounted the search for at that time?"

"Yes," Padmé replied, "Three years of a galaxy-spanning search, and he was probably right there on Coruscant, right under our noses the whole time."

"It is troubling," Bail agreed, "But what can we do with this information? Vader remains our enemy, and we must bring him down if freedom and democracy are to be restored to the galaxy. We cannot allow ourselves to be blinded by who he might have been once."

It was the response Padmé had expected to her revelation. Part of her, the idealistic part, wanted to argue that Vader was redeemable. He wanted the good of the people, just as they did, he had simply chosen the wrong path, the wrong master, to get it. If they could make him see the potential of the Republic, the idea that freedom was not a necessary sacrifice for security and prosperity then he would be a powerful ally. Her rational side, however, told her that there was no way for any of them to approach Vader to convince him of that, that Bail was right and that, away from Vader, there was no chance for her to reach into his soul and rekindle that light which had been such an integral part of Anakin. He was lost to her, and it saddened her deeply to have lost yet more to Palpatine's machinations.

* * *

Leave me a review to let me know what you think!


	7. Conversations

For disclaimers, warnings and pairing notifications, see Chapter 1.

Author Note: Well, here it is, somewhat overdue, but I hope it's better for the extra time I spent on it. Many thanks to all those who were supportive of the enforced time off I had, exams really are a pain sometimes. Still, you've got to do what you've got to do, right? Anyway, enough of my rambling, that's not what you want to read, the story is...

* * *

One week and a very circuitous travel route after her meeting with 'Anakin Skywalker', Sabé Ellinai stepped off a non-descript refugee transport that had brought her from Antar to Alderaan. Antar was a world just recovering from civil conflict begun by its Rebel cell in an attempt to throw off Imperial rule. Ultimately Vader had intervened, mercilessly crushing the Rebels and their supporters. The executions of those fighting for the Rebels had lasted for days, but Vader had killed every last one. The planet's infrastructure had been devastated by the war, which explained the many refugees fleeing from destroyed homes and towns, although not even she could deny that Imperial aid was swiftly bolstering the planet's flagging economy. Millions of credits of relief had been allocated personally by Vader, a gesture she privately suspected to have been authored in reality by Padmé, Vader did not seem like the type to care for the survivors of his pogrom. She made her way through the streets of Aldera towards the Royal Palace. On arriving, however she was at a bit of a loss. 'Skywalker' had told her that if she presented herself to Organa and told him who had sent her, then Organa would certainly take her to Padmé. The question was how to secure an audience with the Viceroy.

As it turned out, she need not have bothered to come up with an elaborate plan, for on her way through the city centre, towards the palace, she ran into one of the Royal Handmaidens of Alderaan, a woman named Melina, whom she had met while serving Padmé as part of her Senatorial entourage and with whom she had forged a reasonable friendship.

"Sabé," the statuesque raven-haired handmaiden called out, "What brings you to Alderaan?"

"Mel!" she greeted, giving the woman a friendly embrace of greeting, "I'm glad to see you. It's been a while since your last holo-message."

"Too long, I know," Melina replied, "Things have been rather busy in the Royal household of late."

"Care to share?" Sabé asked.

"Sorry, Sabé, you know that I can't, not even with you."

Sabé shrugged, such was the life of a Royal Handmaiden. They kept their secrets, even from each other. She had done the same, and even made exactly the same excuse on more than one occasion.

"Actually I could use a little help, Mel," Sabé said, "Help that you might be able to give me."

"Oh?" she arched an eyebrow, "With what?"

"I'm actually here on business, and I need an audience with the Viceroy. Do you think you could get me into the Palace to see him?"

Melina was instantly wary. It was, after all the duty of bodyguards to be suspicious of anyone and everyone, even close friends.

"What sort of business?" she asked cautiously.

"Bodyguard duty," Sabé assured her, not offended at all by the sudden suspicion that hung in the air between them, she would have been exactly the same way for Padmé in the old days, "I was told Viceroy Organa would be able to tell me where the person I'm supposed to be protecting is."

"Alright," Melina agreed, not entirely satisfied by this answer, if the Viceroy had wanted someone protected then he would have asked his own handmaidens, but she knew that she would not get any more out of her Nubian counterpart, and she would far rather escort Sabé in than have her breaking into the Royal Palace. The odds of someone as skilled as Sabé being stopped were only a little better than even, and it would look bad for her if the woman managed to get to the Viceroy without permission.

"Can you come with me now, or do you need time to find a place to stay?"

"I can come now, after all I might be leaving again soon to go wherever."

The two women made their way together around the square. As it turned out, Melina was acting as a messenger today, hand-delivering edicts with the Royal Seal back to the Alderaanian Senate as tradition required before they could be enacted as law. Then they returned to the Royal Palace.

* * *

Padmé paced the floor of the chambers that she called her own in the vast complex that was the Alderaanian Royal Retreat at the Droman Lakes. Every day that she continued to remain here it felt more and more like a mistake. Three weeks since the search for her had begun and news was now flooding in of how it was going. The Holo-Net was casting the search as a manhunt for a dangerous criminal, stoically borne by Imperial citizens out of necessity for their personal safety. The truth was altogether different. She had breathed a sigh of relief when the message had come back from Naboo that the planet was unharmed, that Vader had, quite unthinkably been kind and courteous to the Queen, and instructed his troops and agents to act likewise. Relief had turned to horror, however, when word came in from Chommel Minor, Umgul and Arbra, Naboo's nearest major neighbours. On the surface it was no different, Vader was noted as being unusually courteous and solicitous to the sensibilities of whatever planets he searched, the Imperials came, they asked questions and they left. It was the additional stories that filtered through that were different, more frightening. Stories of nightly disappearances, people simply never seen again, even entire towns that were populated one day and then the next were empty, so many of them that it boggled the mind. Sometimes they turned up, days later and far from where they should have been, with no recollection whatsoever even of the passage of time between their disappearance and reappearance, sometimes they simply vanished as though they had never been. It made her wonder how long it would be before the people of Naboo realised that they too were missing some among their number. Had she stayed, had she disobeyed, could she have prevented all that?

Her musings were interrupted by the door-chime. She answered it, and found Bail standing there. So far he was the only person to come out here and visit her in her solitude. She knew that Obi-Wan was out on another mission, he had said farewell to her before leaving, and asked if she would talk with him about Vader when he returned, to which she had acquiesced, but otherwise there was no one. She understood the need for security, but some days it felt like she was a prisoner once more. It seemed that she was destined to be locked up in seclusion for the rest of her life at this rate.

"Padmé, I hope I haven't caught you at a bad time. I tried to call ahead to let you know I was coming, but there was no answer."

"I'm sorry, Bail, I've just been thinking a lot this morning. I guess I missed the com. Please, come in."

"I'm afraid I have to get back," Bail declined, "but I wanted to reunite you with someone personally. She came to me looking for you yesterday afternoon, so I told her that you would be able to see her today."

"Who?" Padmé asked.

Sabé stepped into view from around the doorframe, very nearly causing Padmé to go into shock from the surprise of seeing one of her oldest friends again. The woman gave her a small smile.

"Hello again Padmé, long time no see."

Padmé was too choked up from meeting her girlhood friend again to make a verbal response, she merely closed the distance between them quickly and pulled the woman who could, and in times past frequently _had_, passed for her twin into a tight hug.

Having done his duty, Bail made an unobtrusive exit as the two women clung to one another. He felt somewhat ambiguous about Sabé's arrival. On the one hand he was happy. He did not like leaving Padmé out here all by herself, but he and Breha could not simply flit back and forth between here and Aldera constantly, it would alert anyone with half a brain to the idea that there was something going on. Sabé would make good company for his friend, he knew the two women were close, although he had never become personally acquainted with Sabé.

On the other hand, however, she had been sent here by Vader, that much was clear from the name she had mentioned. Whether it was actually his name or not, he seemed to have claimed Anakin Skywalker as an operative name, something to use when he did not want the person he was talking to to know him, but that still signalled to those in the know, in other words Padmé, that it was indeed him at work. It was a dangerous puzzle because they were still not sure of Vader's intentions. Padmé had hinted at her opinion strongly enough that he could guess at it, but he was not sure that he agreed with her. Could someone who had demonstrated base immorality for over half a decade suddenly grow a conscience overnight? Did he really care for Padmé's well being or was this all a great ruse of some kind? He continued to turn the debate over in his mind, searching for a new angle, but he could not find one. There was simply not enough evidence to be conclusive one way or the other.

Back in Padmé's chambers, the two old friends had released one another, and Padmé had insisted that Sabé seat herself while she made tea for them both. The blend she was drinking here was native to Alderaan, and was sharp but fruity at the same time. She found that she preferred it without sweeteners of any sort, which was unusual for her. She decided to make it the same way for Sabé as well, they had always been similar in taste in the old days, perhaps not too much had changed. She brought the two steaming cups back, setting one in front of Sabé before seating herself next to her friend on the sofa of the sitting room.

"So…" she said, for once unsure exactly where to begin.

"How are you, Padmé?" Sabé asked softly, "Really?"

"Really? I'm not sure," Padmé answered, "Part of me is glad to be here, away from Coruscant and Imperial Centre. Another part of me wishes that I was back there, with Vader."

"You can't blame yourself for what Vader's doing in his search for you. You know that. Just so you know, nothing happened on Naboo, they came, they asked questions, they left a small detachment of troops behind, but otherwise everyone is fine."

"I'm glad to hear that," Padmé said sincerely, "But I didn't mean because of the search, Sabé. Something was happening, with him I mean. I wasn't sure at the time, but now that I know what I know, and now that I've had time to think it through, I think he was…I don't know exactly, but it was like _he_ was showing through, breaking free of the Sith. Things were changing between us, I'm not sure exactly what but it was definitely happening…I guess you think I'm crazy now."

"Not crazy, Pad," Sabé said gently, although privately she was fairly alarmed by some of the sentiments her friend seemed to be expressing, "Never that, but I think that maybe your view of him has been warped by spending that much time with him. This is _Darth Vader_ we're talking about here. A mass murderer many times over, a Sith Lord, a _creature _who never _ever_ shows his face to anyone, a…"

"I know," Padmé interrupted, holding up a hand to stop her friend mid-tirade, "Believe me I know all that. Life would be much simpler if that was all I knew, but that's not all he is Sabé. There's more to him than just the red lightsaber and the mask."

"What more?" Sabé asked.

"Well…" Padmé started uncertainly, but then decided that perhaps Sabé would make a good sounding board for all the thoughts she had been having the last few days. She could trust her friend to tell her when she was being irrational or stupid.

"It's just that he actually seems to _care_, Sabé, which sounds mad, I know, it _is_ mad, but it's true. He…we talked just before I came here, and he's really thought the whole thing through and come to the conclusion that the Empire is actually good for the galaxy. He's not just blindly following Palpatine's lead, and he's not doing it for the power. He really thinks that the Empire can make the difference that the Republic couldn't. I can't help thinking, what if he's right? Some of the things he said, the corruption, the electioneering, the lack of concern in the Senate, it was right, he was dead on. What it he was dead on about the _rest_ of it as well? What if the Republic really wasn't doing us any favours?"

Now Sabé was genuinely frightened. Padmé had always been a strong proponent of democracy and the Republic. What had happened to her friend to make her question some of her most fundamental beliefs? Had she spent too long with Vader, developed some kind of twisted fixation on him? Or perhaps he had altered her mind with his Force-powers? The notions were grim ones, but she did not act on them yet. Perhaps she was being melodramatic and Padmé was simply suffering uncertainty in the face of a powerful challenge to her beliefs. It would not be the first time it had happened, after all.

"I don't believe that," Sabé declared quietly, "And you shouldn't either. Dictators always claim that they have the people's best interests at heart, you know that. It rarely works out that way though. Maybe it's as you say and he believes he's doing the right thing. That doesn't _make_ it the right thing. Personally I think he just said that to put you off balance, to make you wonder about it, which he obviously succeeded in doing."

"I guess," Padmé said, still feeling somewhat equivocal, "It's just that he was right, about some of it at least. He was right about the corruption, the electioneering, the lack of concern for the common good, all that petty manoeuvring. And he was right that we don't have any of that in the Empire, the Empire does get things done…"

"But at what cost?" Sabé countered, "Everything is at the whim of one man, a lying, deceitful, power-hungry specimen of a man at that. How many worlds are aided simply because their representatives at the Imperial Court are good sycophants to the Emperor? How many worlds does Vader lay waste to at Palpatine's order simply because Palpatine felt slighted by them in some way? Who makes sure that the common good is upheld? Where is accountability? Oversight? The say of the people? The Empire doesn't have those things and you know it, Padmé."

"You're right," Padmé said, although Sabé could tell that it was the kind of agreement meant to forestall further argument so that she could think on the matter carefully. Sabé decided to let her get away with it this time, there was no denying that this was a debate whose outcome would be near and dear to Padmé's heart, and so allowed the conversation to be steered in other directions.

* * *

Obi-Wan Kenobi guided his starfighter smoothly down through the clear atmosphere of Alderaan towards the now-familiar complex of the Droman Lakes Royal Retreat. Recently returned from a detailed survey mission of the planets of the Cron Drift, he had made his report to the Jedi Council, and they were now in the process of considering which of these isolated worlds would be the best site to relocate the Jedi Order to. While they continued their deliberations, he had come here to the Droman Lakes to attend to a piece of personal business. It was hardly the most pleasant of prospects, but it needed to be done, he _had_ to know.

He had commed ahead, and Padmé was waiting for him at the edge of the landing platform. There was a second figure standing with her, a figure that appeared to be female as he drew near enough to discern such things so he knew it could not be Bail. Ever cautious he reached out with his senses, and was surprised to find the companion to be none other than Sabé Ellinai, Padmé's onetime handmaiden and close friend. What was she doing here? How had she found them? He resolved to add those questions to the others that were a burning weight on his soul, because they held grave implications for Padmé's safety. If Sabé could find them, then how long would it be before Imperial Agents did the same?

He set the fighter down smoothly and popped the hatch, savouring the clean, natural scent of real atmosphere rather than the recycled, carbon-scrubbed air that was circulated through his ship when it was sealed. Then he climbed out of the fighter and exchanged greetings with the two women. Ever the gracious hostess, Padmé led them inside and offered tea, which Obi-Wan accepted gratefully. As she was in the kitchen, brewing the tea, Obi-Wan and Sabé were left alone in the sitting room.

"How are you Sabé?" he asked somewhat awkwardly. He had not counted on the other woman's presence. He had assumed that it would just be Padmé and himself. Could he count on getting honest answers with the handmaiden present? Did he even want to bring up the questions he had in front of the other woman? He decided that he had little choice. Who knew how long he might have before he relocated to wherever the Jedi Order chose to set themselves up next? And after that happened he might well not be able to speak with Padmé in person again. And this was most definitely _not _the kind of conversation to have across a holo-net transmission.

"I'm well, Master Kenobi," the quiet handmaiden replied, "What about yourself? Before you got here Padmé was telling me that you were on a survey mission for the Jedi?"

"Yes," Obi-Wan replied, "That's so, although I can't say where exactly I was. We are in the process of surveying locations with the potential for moving the Jedi Order to a secure and secret location. As for being well…" he shrugged, "I suppose I am well, for someone whose existence is threatened because of the way of life he leads, for someone who discovered recently that someone who would have been like a son to me is now one of the most feared beings in all the galaxy."

Sabé looked at him oddly. As far as she could recall Obi-Wan Kenobi had not been a wallower before. He had taken the death of his master on Naboo and made something good out of it by forming a friendship with a young boy in need of a father figure. She supposed, however, that these were difficult times and everyone became overwhelmed some of the time.

"I'm not entirely sure whether I should say that that's good, because it sounds terrible, Master Kenobi, despite the fact that you're claiming to be well."

Fleetingly Obi-Wan wondered if the young handmaiden was making fun of him slyly, but he dismissed it. Even he had to admit that his characterisation of 'fine' sounded grim. He smiled in an effort to lighten the mood.

"I apologise," he said, "Sometimes it is difficult not to dwell on the negatives of a situation."

"That's understandable, I suppose," Sabé offered with a smile of her own.

At that moment Padmé returned with tea for each of them, and after she had placed a their cups before them she took her own and sat down in a third chair, forming a triangle between the three of them. They sat there in awkward silence for a minute or two, none of them exactly sure what to say to one another. Obi-Wan knew what he wanted to talk about, but was not sure exactly how to begin. Padmé had an inkling of what, or rather _who_, Obi-Wan wanted to talk about, but was trying to think of ways to avoid the subject that she still had not yet resolved in her own mind. Sabé, unaware of the exact nature of what was bothering her two friends, watched both curiously, waiting for one or other to give her some sign of what this was all about. Eventually, and slightly uncharacteristically, it was Padmé who cracked first.

"Obi-Wan," she sighed, "Please, just ask me. We both know it's what you really want to talk about."

He smiled tightly, but it did not reach his eyes.

"Am I that obvious?" he asked.

"About this? Yes you are, but only because I know that I would want to know as well," Padmé replied.

"What was it like then?" Obi-Wan asked, "What was _he _like?"

Padmé was silent for a long moment as she considered her answer to those deceptively simple questions. When she did speak, she was still somewhat hesitant, as she measured each word carefully before speaking. She knew that this conversation would have far-reaching consequences, not just for her and for Obi-Wan, but also for Vader and perhaps even for the galaxy at large. Maybe if she could get Obi-Wan on side, together they could come up with a way to help Vader onto the right path. After all, he had once slipped into Vader's private home, was it so inconceivable that he might be able to get her in secretly as well?

"He was…never what I expected him to be," she began, "I expected him to be arrogant, narcissistic and cruel. But it wasn't like that, even if I didn't recognise it at first. Do you know, that first night I was expecting him to rape me?

She blushed at the personal information that she was about to reveal, but she couldn't think of a way to tell only part of the story. It was like a puzzle box, each piece interlocking to form the whole picture, and if you were missing a piece then you might see a completely different image.

"But he never did," she continued, "He never…we've never…"

"Not even after the bargain you made with him?" Obi-Wan interrupted. It took her a moment to understand what he was talking about, but when she did, she shook her head with a rather hollow laugh.

"After you left, he told me I was his wife, not his whore. Do you know how many times people have called me his whore? And the ironic thing is, we've never actually done _anything_!

"But that's not the most important part," she stated, "The way he's treated me is just one thing, and not even a particularly important one at that. While we were on board the Executor, I got a chance to really _see_ him, see how he works. He's a harsh man, there's no doubt, I've watched him kill subordinates who failed him, and I've hated him for doing it. But he doesn't just run around killing everyone who slips up on the ship. He just doesn't tolerate people making errors because they were looking out for themselves instead of doing their duty. I never thought about it until later, but he hardly ever kills people _just _because they didn't accomplish whatever task he assigned them. They were nearly always trying to get ahead by casting the blame on others, or trying to protect their own niches of power rather than do what was necessary to accomplish the mission.

"I've only recently come to see the rest. Just before I left Coruscant and came here, we…talked," she shivered at the memory of the conversation that had overturned so many of her preconceptions about the way the Republic had worked, or not worked as the case may be, "It was just after I discovered his identity for the first time. I called him on it, tried to make him tell me why he'd pretended for so long that he didn't know me.

"After he denied everything, we got to talking about his beliefs. After I found out that he might be Anakin, even if he didn't believe it, I just…I wanted to know what it was that Palpatine had done, what lies he had been fed to justify all the things that he had done. Some of the things he said…I could hardly believe I was talking to a Sith. I really think he thinks that the Empire is _good_ for the people, or at least better than the Republic was. He really does seem to _care_ about people as a whole, but he's more concerned about ensuring their material well-being rather than protecting their freedoms and or their power in government. He told me that in his childhood, the one he remembers before Palpatine took him, he would gladly have given up what he called 'abstract concepts' to have food every day or a job or a place to sleep. I think he's just trying to prevent what he thinks he went through from happening to anyone else. He's not just spouting ideology from rote, Obi-Wan, he's really thought things through, weighed the options, and come to the conclusion that the Empire's way of doing things is at least better than the Republic."

Obi-Wan could hardly believe what he was hearing. Padmé had always been a strong advocate of the Republic, a great believer in the right of the people to have a say in their own government and the various freedoms that the Republic offered. How was it then that she could now be coming out with things that sounded dangerously close to supportive statements for the Empire? He had personally scanned her mind for lingering alterations and found nothing, which left him with the distasteful idea that Vader had evidently made a very compelling argument indeed to sway Padmé, and if it was that compelling…

"So you're saying that he's convinced you that Palpatine is in the right?"

Padmé's eyes snapped up to his, angry fire burning in them.

"Don't ever say that!" she spat, "I hate that man, more than you can possibly imagine. All I'm saying is that _Vader _follows him because he thinks it's the only way to provide security and prosperity for the galaxy at large. What I'm trying to say is that maybe he's not the total loss we thought he was.

Her tone was back to hesitant and pleading again.

"There's good in him still, Obi-Wan, I know it. I could _see _it coming through. He's not just a mindless killing machine, despite what some people say. He has a sense of honour, even if _we_ think it's warped, and he's trying to achieve a good thing by the best means he knows of. I…I really think that if we could reach out to him, show him that Palpatine's way _isn't_ the only way to achieve the good of the people, then maybe we could turn him back, get him to fight against Palpatine with us."

"You love him."

Surprisingly it was a statement that came from both Obi-Wan and Sabé simultaneously, and Padmé started at the reminder that her best friend was also in the room. She had been so intent on the Jedi, so focussed on trying to make him see what she saw, that she had forgotten about the other woman's presence.

"Yes," she admitted, but it wasn't quite right, love was not quite the right word for what she felt, "No…I'm not sure. I think that I _could _love him, if we had met differently, if he hadn't been a Sith, or a follower of Palpatine. He's not the monster I thought he was. He has other parts to him, parts that have been suppressed by the gossip and the rumours about him. I just think he should have the chance. We've taken in Imperial Defectors before, look at Major Madine, or Colonel Cracken. They've been loyal and brave men for our cause. The difference is that Vader can't possibly know that what he's doing is wrong. He was half _raised_ by Palpatine. I think it's a miracle that he's good _at_ _all_. If nothing else, we owe it to _Anakin_ to try."

Obi-Wan sighed deeply. He had come here expecting to receive answers that would allow him to wash his hands of his onetime apprentice. He had _expected_ to hear that Anakin was so deeply steeped in the Dark Side that the boy he had known was completely destroyed. That was, after all, what Jedi teachings on the Dark Side suggested would have happened. Instead he had heard exactly the opposite, he had heard that even without knowing who he was himself, Anakin was present and very much a force within Vader. Padmé was right, they owed it to Anakin to try and bring him back, to free the man from his indoctrinated upbringing.

He had to wonder though, would they have felt the same way if they did not think that Vader was their old friend? Would Padmé have been nearly as passionate in her defence of a man she had no past with? Would he be willing to acquiesce to her pleas to help a stranger? He was not sure he liked the answer to those questions, because he strongly suspected that the answer would be 'no'. And if it was, what did that say about them? Did they really have right on their side if they were willing to deny a man the chance to do the right thing simply because he had been taught that evil _was_ the right thing? In some ways these new questions were even harder to bear than the ones he had come here with, for there was no one who could give a definitive answer.

"You're right," he said at length, "If things are as you say, then we owe it to Vader to try. Even if he weren't Anakin, I think perhaps we would owe it to him to try."

Trying to keep her composure, even though within she felt as though she could easily start crying from sheer relief, she turned to the third member of their small triangle.

"And you, Sabé?"

For her part, Sabé was not sure what to think. Obi-Wan had asked the most important questions that she herself had been dying to ask since she had found Padmé, and most especially so since Padmé had told her of Darth Vader's true identity. They had all been answered to the satisfaction of any reasonable person, she supposed. Still she could not shake the lingering doubts. What if Vader was merely duping them all? Playing the good man in order to win their confidence? Could this all have been an elaborate scheme by Vader and the Emperor to expose the entire Resistance at once? She looked into brown eyes that were so similar to her own, but did not find the pleading persuasiveness she was looking for, only expectation of her answer. It seemed Padmé was not going to offer her an easy way out of this; she would have to make up her own mind.

She recalled her own encounter with Vader, no longer frightened by the fact that she had met the most feared man in the galaxy and not realised it. He had been intense, but his only concern had seemed to be for Padmé. She remembered well how vehement he had been that she should not tell anyone where Padmé was. The man had gone to extraordinary lengths to see that his wife was safe. That sort of caring was not easily faked, and it demonstrated that Vader did not only care for himself, just as Padmé had said. Her reservations diminished, although they did not vanish. Perhaps it was worth taking the chance on. After all there was no gain without risk, she had advocated that most of her life. The only question was whether the risk was worth the gain, and to have the second-most-powerful man in the galaxy on their side, she supposed that almost any risk would be worth it.

"I'll help you," she told her oldest friend, "For Anakin. He was…special, he deserved better."

Padmé nodded. Anakin had indeed been special, and she was glad to have both of her best friends with her in this, no matter what their reasoning.

* * *

Palpatine, emperor of the galaxy, stood on the balcony of his spacious Coruscant apartment. His plans for a full palatial complex were still in progress, and it was a delicious irony that the palace from which he would rule the newly reborn Sith Empire would be founded in the place where the much-overrated Jedi Temple had once stood. Nevertheless his current residence was more than fitting for a man of his station. His balcony was high enough that he could look up and see the gigantic globule of the galactic core. It was not exactly the area of stars he wanted to be able to see from here, but it would do. His prime concerns actually lay in the Mid-Rim at the moment, with his apprentice.

Lord Vader was becoming troublesome. He appeared to be searching quite rabidly for his missing wife. The stories filtering back to Coruscant of mysterious disappearances, interrogation subjects reduced to vegetables by mental probes and such pleased him no end. Nevertheless Palpatine felt that something was out of place with his young protégé. He could not pinpoint it exactly, but he had the feeling that his orders were not being carried out. Unfortunately the boy was a strong enough nexus in the Force that even a Sith Master could not fully unravel all the goings-on that surrounded him, so he was left with vague feelings rather than specific information on Vader's doings.

That was why he had called one of his most trusted servants to him, a woman whom he could feel even now traversing the ante-room of the apartment silently, clearly hoping to prove her worth as a stealthy assassin to her master. Roganda Ismaren was yet a young woman, and certainly a neophyte in his corps of private spies and assassins which he had dubbed the Emperor's Hands. Nevertheless she had already proved herself rather gifted in investigating and tracking down people, possibly due to her talent as a Seer, which was prodigious, if untrained. The Jedi, it seemed, made a habit of wasting the particular gifts of their members. They were all trained in the same way, as generic super-soldiers, negotiators and charlatans. Individual gifts had never been nourished by them, Roganda was evidence of that. It was one of the myriad reasons why they had been so easy to beat. They did not nurture talents that might have been capable of ferreting him out, such as Seeing. Instead they had left it to him to mould children like Roganda, to teach them the nature of the Dark Side, and in so doing strengthen his own power.

Because he _was _the Dark Side. A symbiotic relationship that allowed him to feed off the fear and anger of others as well as his own emotions in order to empower himself. So long as the Dark Side had strong adherents, and so long as fear and strife were rampant throughout the galaxy, he would have strength beyond reckoning.

He marked the girl's progress until she was less than two metres away.

"Good evening, my dear," he drawled without turning around.

He could feel the young assassin's surprise at being caught, and laughed internally as it flooded through her. Sometimes even charlatanism and parlour tricks had their place. Fear and wonder were a powerful combination for keeping subordinates in line, and the girl already knew to fear him. He could feel it rolling off her in waves, a fine elixir of strength for him.

"You sent for me, my lord?" she said, bowing her head. Palpatine knew she bowed, even though he did not turn around, he Saw it.

"Yes, I did," he said, beckoning her absently forward, "I have decided that Lord Vader's search for his errant wife has consumed him for too long. This task must be finished soon or my other plans will become out of place. Therefore I am setting you the task of finding Padmé Amidala and bringing her here."

"I understand, my lord," Palpatine nearly laughed out loud at the disappointment that flooded through his young Hand, "When must I report to Lord Vader?"

"You must not," he rejoined, "This investigation is to be conducted without his knowledge. If you should find her before he does, then you will bring her here. If he should find her first, I will hold it as no failure on your part. It was his task first, after all."

"Very good, my lord."

He made a flicking motion with his had to dismiss her, and marked her exit from his apartment before returning his attention to the star-cluster that was substituting for the one he really wanted to look at.

* * *

Leave me a review and let me know what you thought!


	8. Kidnapping

For disclaimers, warnings and pairing notifications, see Chapter 1.

Author Note: Well, for those of you that thought I was dead, or had abandoned this story, I'm not, and I haven't. Only you can decide whether that's a good thing or not. :) The substance of this note must begin with a credit, which is to Fialleril for Sabe's last name: Ellinai. I'm sorry to say I stole it without realising I was stealing it, I thought it was actually her name from canon. Anyway, Fialleril has graciously allowed me to carry on using it now that I've started, so many thanks to you for that my friend. The other thing I have to do is apologise for how short this chapter is. I did spend quite a lot of time looking for a way to make it longer, but in the end everything I tried just felt too artificial, and dragged on the important parts of the chapter, I hope you'll agree with me that it was better in the end to keep the focus tight and to the point rather than introduce other fairly useless material. Anyway, enough of my babble, on with the show...

* * *

Roganda Ismaren smiled hungrily at the walls of the Alderaanian Royal Retreat at the Droman Lakes. It had taken her over five months of investigation to get this close, but she was certain beyond doubt that her quarry was in the palatial complex below her. She had chased leads and Force intuition half way across the galaxy to track down the assassin Gann, who had revealed that the onetime Lady Vader had fled to Alderaan. Unfortunately the assassin's mind had then sunk beyond the ability to form coherent thoughts before she could extract a more precise location from him. That slip-up had lengthened her hunt by almost three weeks as she kept watch on Bail Organa through the proxy of Imperial Intelligence.

Eventually, however, an outgoing message had sparked her talent as a Seer and she had read it closely. It had been addressed to a woman named Sabé, and she had managed to find a match in the lists of people associated with Padmé Amidala Vader: a Sabé Ellinai, formerly Royal Handmaiden and bodyguard to the Queen of Naboo when Amidala had held that position. It was a tenuous link, but Sabé Ellinai had been on personal leave from the palace for virtually the entire time Vader was searching for his lost wife. His first visit was to Naboo, and only days later the Ellinai woman left Naboo and disappeared, and now Bail Organa was sending communiqués to a woman of that name living here in one of the most secluded of Alderaan's Royal Residences. It was quite a coincidence to Roganda's mind, and this fact filled her with excitement. If she could prove that Darth Vader had betrayed his master then she might find enough favour with the Emperor to move into the position of Sith Apprentice herself.

Her plan here was simple. The complex was too secure for one person to break in, kidnap someone and then hope to escape with a prisoner, it was a fool's errand to try. That was why she had used her Imperial authority to requisition a platoon of stormtroopers from the local garrison. A few missing troopers would not be noticed, and the garrison was aware that her mission was covert and were doing everything in their power to cover the sudden shortfall of men in Aldera. Once she had secured the former Lady Vader, she would return to Coruscant with her prize and present her master with the woman and with her suspicions.

She turned to the armoured figure standing beside her, awaiting her order.

"Signal your men, Lieutenant, we are moving in. Remind them that their weapons should be set to stun only, I want the occupant as a prisoner."

The stormtrooper nodded and gave the appropriate signal. At once thirty men in camouflaged armour rose up from the long grass and charged up to the main door of the complex. It was open within thirty seconds, blasted inwards by a powerful demolition charge and they moved into the palatial complex. Thirty more circled around the back and used grapples and climbing ropes to begin scaling the rear walls in order to enter through the entrances on the roof.

* * *

Obi-Wan Kenobi raised his head automatically when he sensed a small tremor in the Force, much as a dog would on hearing a high-pitched whistle. He traced the disturbance back to its origin, and did not like what he found, not one bit. The tremor led back to the Droman Lakes Retreat, to Padmé, and it had danger written all over it, and no small amount of the Dark Side either. He did not waste time probing the matter too deeply. Danger involving Padmé could only mean that they had been discovered. He summoned his lightsaber to himself mentally, even as he ran out the door of his room.

Minutes later he was in his starfighter and blasting away from the Jedi Enclave in the Castle Lands at a speed well beyond the maximum safe velocity for flying in the deep canyons. He climbed out of them and screamed through the air towards the Droman Lakes. Even pushing his fighter to its tolerance limits for atmospheric speeds, however, it would still take him twelve minutes to reach Padmé's hideaway. He prayed to the Force that he would not be too late.

* * *

Sabé cursed herself for a fool the moment she heard the inner door give way under the concerted efforts of blaster rifle fire and a couple of thermal detonators. The Imperials had caught them unawares and woefully unprepared. They had counted too much on their presence in this place remaining a secret, and had not made enough preparations for the eventuality of their discovery. She had not even planned an escape route for them, for Force's sake! She was definitely slipping. At least they had weapons, they were not totally defenceless. Before they had gotten shot out, the cams in the entrance hall had shown thirty troopers and a woman in a black jumpsuit. Fifteen-to-one odds were not great, but they had faced worse and triumphed. She did her utmost to ignore that those triumphs had uniformly been the result of outside intervention, which they could not count on here.

The sound of running boot-steps brought her out of her self-recrimination. She had made a mistake, but now was not the time to dwell on that. They had other things to do now, like get out of this alive. She would learn from her mistake later. Seconds after she completed this thought, storm-troopers in camouflaged armour came charging into the t-junction they had picked to set their trap in, led by the woman in black they had seen. Sabé did not hesitate, but simply opened fire, red darts of blaster fire emerging from her weapon as fast as she could pull the trigger. She heard Padmé join in as well. What happened next caused her to feel surprise and no small amount of fear. With the distinctive _snap-hiss _activation sound the woman pulled out a red lightsaber and began deflecting the blaster bolts.

She was obviously not fully trained, Sabé remembered seeing Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn in action on Naboo years ago, they had made it look totally effortless as they warded off the fire of over two dozen battle droids while this woman was obviously putting in considerable effort to blocking the fire from just Padmé and herself. Nevertheless it was being blocked, and the Imperials were advancing, albeit much more slowly, up the hallway towards them. Sabé caught Padmé's eye and cast a very quick flick of her eyes in the direction of the corridor behind them. Padmé nodded her agreement, and with a final withering hail of shots, the two women broke cover and fled up the hallway, the Imperials breaking into pursuit as well.

When they reached the next intersection of hallways, a crossroads junction as it happened, she went left, and was gratified to see that Padmé was thinking exactly the same way she had, and ran the opposite way from her, setting the Imperials up for a crossfire. They had just enough time to duck into doorways for some minimal cover before the Imperials entered the junction of hallways, the woman with the lightsaber in the lead. Instantly they were in the teeth of Padmé and Sabé's crossfire, and four troopers went down in an eye-blink.

More rushed to take their places, however, and sheer weight of numbers forced both women back as they themselves came under a withering hail of stun-bolts. At least the Imperials were trying to take them alive, but this was little consolation as she would probably be interrogated and tortured to death, while Padmé was already slated for public execution anyway. Sabé therefore felt no real qualms as another stormtrooper fell to her lethal fire. Happily enough, at least to Sabé's mind, the woman with the lightsaber chose to lead the way towards herself, leaving Padmé only ordinary stormtroopers to deal with. She retreated as quickly as she could while keeping up the withering hail of fire that was her best protection against her enemies.

Roganda snarled as yet another of her troopers went down to the lethal fire of the woman she was chasing. The Lady Vader and her companion were reasonably smart and had chosen to split up. Unable to tell which was which from a distance, she had made a snap decision to follow this woman, but the pursuit was proving difficult. The woman was obviously highly trained in combat, which led her to think that she had come after the wrong woman after all. She could not risk it, however, she had to bring them both in, capturing the wrong woman and allowing the Lady Vader to escape would result in severe punishment from the Emperor, which was not something she wanted to evoke.

* * *

Obi-Wan virtually crash-landed his small starfighter onto the landing pad of the Droman Lakes complex in his haste to get on the ground as quickly as possible. He was out of the fighter seconds later. A cursory glance showed that the door leading into the complex had been blasted inwards, with explosives judging by the scorch marks on the doorframe. The detail increased his anxiety, but also served to clue him into the nature of the danger. Clearly there were intruders in the complex, hostile ones, which must mean Imperial agents.

He took a moment to calm himself and stretched out with the Force as he did so, looking for living Force signatures nearby. He found them almost immediately, and did not like what he felt one bit. Padmé and Sabé should have been the only ones here, but now he could sense more than fifty individuals within the complex, in four distinct groups. He also sensed the presence of a Dark Side user. It was not Vader's signature, he remembered that one well from their last encounter, but it was definitely a trained Force-user, and one of reasonable skill and power at that. The Dark Sider was with the smaller of the two groups of Force signatures, their use of the Dark Side clouding his senses concerning the exact identity of who else was there.

Two more groups of Force signatures were composed of individuals he did not know, he could only discern their hostile intent, although it was strangely muted. The final group contained Padmé and a number of other individuals that he sensed to be hostile. Padmé, however, did not seem particularly afraid, so he guessed that she was not in grave danger just yet from these intruders. Since he had not been able to sense Sabé, he guessed that she must be in the group that was near to the Dark Sider, the group he could not sense very well. It was therefore clear to him that she was in the most immediate danger and that he should help her first.

The decision made, he set off at a run towards the location of the Dark Sider, his lightsaber lit and thrumming in his hand. It was mere minutes before he ran into people, but it was not whom he was looking for. Instead he ran into a group of white armoured stormtroopers. Thanks to the Force he had ample warning of their presence, and so he was ready for them, but nevertheless they cost him precious seconds as he reflected bolts and slashed his way through those that were too close to direct blaster fire at.

The troops disposed of, he continued on at a dead run. He finally came close to his intended target. Unfortunately Force intuition works both ways, and Roganda's talent as a Seer meant that she was much more attuned to such prompts. She was therefore already waiting for the Jedi when he came barrelling around the corner, her lightsaber raised in a combat stance.

Obi-Wan did not hesitate, merely raised his lightsaber and continued with his forward momentum, charging straight at the Dark Sider. Red and blue lightsabers spat and hummed as the pair moved seamlessly into a deadly dance. Obi-Wan was clearly the better swordsman, but her superior prescience allowed her to hold her own as she foresaw his actions far enough in advance to be ready with a counter.

Obi-Wan grew frustrated as the duel dragged on. He knew that this woman was his inferior in lightsaber combat, but somehow she knew what he would do even before he did. He was gaining ground, but at the cost of time, the woman was clearly trying to delay him while her troops captured Padmé and Sabé. In an attempt to hasten the inevitable, he switched styles from his preferred Soresu to the much more aggressive Djem So, the fifth form of lightsaber combat. While he was not as proficient at it as he was with Soresu, it was clear that the woman was not able to match him in its use either.

She gave ground more quickly, but inexplicably, with each backward step she took her smile, which had appeared about the same time that he switched styles, grew wider and more feral. It was only the very faintest flicker of the Force that alerted him to the small-bladed Shoto lightsaber that suddenly appeared in her left hand and flickered out in an attempt to shear off his own saber hand. He threw his whole body backwards to avoid the strike, performing a Force-assisted backwards roll to gain distance in case she made a second strike while he was on the ground, and came up in a crouch two or three metres from his starting point.

To his surprise, however, the woman did not press her advantage. Instead she extinguished both her sabers and stepped backwards.

"You're too late, Jedi," she spat, "I have what I came for."

Then she fled down the hallway away from Obi-Wan. It was not hard for him to surmise from her statement that Padmé had been captured, since it was unlikely that an Imperial agent would have an interest in Sabé, or anything else that might reside here in a remote residence of the Alderaanian Royal Family. He therefore gave chase immediately in the hopes of either stopping the woman before she could escape, or at least following her to where Padmé was in the hope that he might be able to rescue her if she was indeed captive.

The chase led them through the complex as the woman ran for the main entrance to the complex. As they ran, Obi-Wan remained frustratingly just too far behind to catch and stop her. He was close enough, however to hear her barking orders into her com-link. She was instructing her troops to be ready to pick her up outside the entrance, and she called off a plan designation he did not expect to recognise. In any case her escape plan became abundantly clear when they reached the main gate of the complex.

Hovering a good fifteen feet in the air on repulsorlifts directly in front of the main gateway was a medium-sized Lambda-class shuttle. The ramp was extended and the woman showed no hesitation in making a Force-assisted jump straight onto it. He attempted to follow her, but fell short as the shuttle began to move away. He landed once again and looked up to see the woman looking down at him from her higher position. She smiled and raised her saber hilt in a mocking salute at him as the shuttle moved off, then turned and made her way up the ramp, which retracted behind her as the shuttle began to pick up altitude and velocity.

For a moment the sense of failure threatened to overwhelm him, but he fought the feeling. He would need his wits about him to rescue the two women, because it hardly required a genius to surmise that they would be taken to Coruscant, to Vader and the Emperor. He turned to enter the palace complex again, intent on returning to his starfighter and heading back to the Jedi Enclave to begin planning his own intrusion.

* * *

Half way across the galaxy, in orbit around the third planet of the Praesetlyn system, Darth Vader felt a small tremor in the Force. It was faint, so faint that he doubted a less-attuned person than himself would have felt it. He followed it, searching for the cause of the disturbance. Unfortunately the feeling quickly grew too cold for him to follow. He managed to follow it far enough to know that it had originated somewhere in the Galactic Core, but more precisely than that he could not say. He also guessed, that for him to feel anything at all over this distance it must hold great significance to him personally, or else be to do with someone to whom he was particularly attached.

His mind slid instantly to Padmé on Alderaan, but he dismissed it. She was safe hidden on Alderaan, Organa would see to it that she could never be found. Nevertheless, he could not shake the feeling that something had changed, that the balance had tipped against himself. He just did not know how, and the feeling filled him with foreboding.

The approach of an ensign drew him out of his introspections.

"My lord, the Emperor has sent you his personal summons," the ensign said with a respectful bow of the head, "He commands your presence on Coruscant as quickly as possible."

"Very well," he told the ensign, "Ready my personal ship, and send Admiral Ozzel to me, I will instruct him on how to proceed with our mission in my absence."

"Very good, my lord," the ensign replied and marched off at double time to fulfil the commands of the fearsome Sith Lord.

Vader watched him go as he considered what his master might want. Perhaps Palpatine had finally grown tired of his apprentice's continuing failure and was preparing his death. Perhaps that was what the disturbance he had felt in the Force had been warning him of. He set it aside for now, he would find out what Palpatine wanted when he reached Coruscant. In the meantime he would need to give Ozzel very precise and strict orders in order to ensure that the fleet and the search for his wife remained bogged down here between the Mid and Outer Rims in his absence.

* * *

Well, there you have it. Now it's your turn to get writing and tell me what you thought. Was it good, bad or ugly?


	9. Imprisonment

For disclaimers, warnings and pairing notifications, see Chapter 1.

Author Note: Sorry guys, but I'm currently grappling with that most feared of all beasts, the dreaded writer's block! Instead of leaving you all hanging indefinitely, I decided to split this chapter in two. Wish me luck in getting on with the rest! On a separate note, since the introduction of the Reader Traffic feature, I was really rather surprised at how world-spanning all of you guys reading this story actually are. According to the site, I have readers as far flung from myself, and from each other as China, Australia, the U.S., Iran, Israel, Iceland and Brazil. So wherever you happen to be reading this from, greetings from the United Kingdom!

* * *

Padmé sat up sharply when the door to her cell slid upwards, but slumped back against the durasteel wall of her cell when she saw that it was the woman who had overseen her capture a week ago. The woman had come to visit her regularly over the last week, but for some reason she never spoke, just sat there, watching her. Padmé could not deny that she found this rather disturbing. She had attempted to make conversation with the woman the first few times she had visited, but she had simply been ignored. She knew that the Force allowed for the reading of people's minds and emotions, but she had no idea to what degree. What was the woman learning just by looking at and into her?

She was surprised, however, when the door did not close behind the woman, and she did not take up her accustomed seat on the lip of the lower rim of the heavy doorframe. Instead she stood to one side, to reveal a second figure. Padmé could not help the swell of anger and hatred that rose up in her as she looked at the face of a man she had once trusted and looked up to as a mentor. Guilt also rode the anger and hatred as she recalled well her own part in allowing the man the power he now held.

"Greetings, Lady Vader," Palpatine said in a silky tone, "A fine chase you have led us for the last six months, but now you are where you belong once again."

She bit back several choice curses that she would dearly have liked to spit out at him with all the venom she could muster. She knew Palpatine well enough to know that he loved that sort of reaction from his victims, even if she did not quite understand why. Instead she fixed him with a cool and imperious gaze.

"What do you want, Palpatine?" she asked, for all the world as if she were the one in command here and he were intruding upon her precious time. It had served to get on the nerves of countless Imperial officials before when she treated them as lower than herself.

Unfortunately the Emperor himself appeared unaffected by such minor tricks as he simply chuckled dryly.

"Why nothing more than to reunite you with your loving husband," he chortled, "The poor man has been searching for you quite frantically these last six months."

She did not give Palpatine the satisfaction of a response to that jibe, merely stood as he beckoned her and stiffly exited her cell, suffering the indignity of binders around her wrists with as much grace and poise as was possible. A squad of old-design battle droids surrounded Palpatine and herself as they started off for their destination, wherever that might be. She did wonder, however, if he knew about Vader's involvement in her departure from Coruscant.

"Oh yes," Palpatine said, obviously having read the surface thought, "I am fully aware of my apprentice's treachery where you are concerned, my lady. Rest assured he is even now paying most dearly for it, and for his many other transgressions where you are concerned."

She was surprised by that. Other transgressions? _Many_ other transgressions? She could not help but wonder what they were. As far as she knew, Vader had never disobeyed a command from Palpatine. She had watched him commit heinous crimes on his master's order, although since her exile from Coruscant, she had come to wonder if Vader had not been misled about the nature of a great many of his missions. Palpatine must have picked up her thoughts again, for his voice was now surprised and amused.

"You do not know what I am talking about, do you Lady Vader? My Apprentice never told you anything, did he? What delicious irony! I had not expected _this_."

Padmé was apprehensive. She was not going to like this, she could already tell. But she had to know, she could not _not_ ask, not after what Palpatine had said.

"What do you mean?"

She hated the way her voice trembled, betraying her weakness for all, even though she knew that as a Sith, Palpatine could feel her fear anyway. Palpatine leered at her.

"Tell me, Lady Vader, did you ever sleep with your husband?"

She blushed at the frank question.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"It was such a small thing I asked, so easily achieved," Palpatine said with false sorrow, "I only wanted to ensure that there would be worthy heirs to my throne for when I am gone. But _you_," he glared at her with frightening intensity, "_you_ refused to cooperate, and my Apprentice was too weak to take what was rightfully his, too weak to do as I commanded. Then he was too weak to see you disposed of. Now he is paying the price for those weaknesses."

Padmé felt sick as she put meaning to Palpatine's roundabout explanation. Palpatine had ordered Vader to rape her, that much was obvious, and she knew that he never had. Other things suddenly fell suspiciously into place as she thought about it, like Vader's 'punishment' the day before she had left Coruscant. Had that been for his refusal to do what Palpatine asked? Had it been the only time? Days when Vader had been in audience with the Emperor for hours at a time suddenly leapt to the forefront of her memory. She had never thought anything of them before, now she wondered, what had really happened in those 'audiences'? What made it worse was that for months this had been her greatest fear: that one night Vader would indeed rape her. To discover that he had actually refused to do so on someone else's orders made her feel disgusted with herself. He had been so much better as a man than she had ever given him credit for, and she had never realised it.

Before she had much time to contemplate this further, however, they arrived at their destination. Palpatine put his palm to the reader to open the heavy-looking durasteel door, which swung inwards silently rather than sliding to one side, and they entered. Padmé could not help but gasp at the scene that confronted her within.

Palpatine revelled in the waves of horror and disgust that rolled off of the woman next to him, strengthening him beyond measure. Padmé Amidala had always been a woman of powerful passions, which was virtually the only reason he refrained from having her killed at all given her constant and thoroughly annoying adherence to and advocacy of the values of the weak such as freedom, democracy, equality and a thousand other words that he would dearly enjoy seeing excised from the record of galactic language. Had she been a Force-sensitive, she would have been a powerful Sith. As it was the sheer force of her emotions, and the power that those emotions provided him, were a valuable trade-off for the aggravation she caused him. He had hoped that marriage to Lord Vader, in addition to providing him with the heirs he desired, might have lessened her influence, but even so she had managed to cause him problems, sowing the seeds of rebellion in Vader's mind. Now he had due cause to keep her out of the way for life.

"See what he suffers for your sake, Lady Vader?" he asked, mocking her in a way that he knew would only intensify her guilt.

She made no reply, but she did not have to, he felt her response, and he savoured the power it fed him.

* * *

Pain.

It consumed him with its fiery red fingers in a way that it had never done before, inflicted by ancient torture devices designed specifically for use on Force-users, they tapped directly into his nervous system, feeding him copious pain signals, and as a secondary effect they also stimulated his midi-chlorians, using the very things that gave him his strength in the Force against him to heighten the pain. The lower levels of the Jedi Temple were truly an interesting tell on the real character of the Jedi Order. Down here he was isolated from the Force, unable to call on it to deaden the agony, and so he had retreated within himself, an interesting trick he had learned by accident when practising healing trances. It was essentially the first step of entering a healing trance, the dissociation of mind from body, but with minor alterations, it could become an end in itself rather than a step in achieving the desired state.

Of course there was danger in doing this, he could be mortally wounded in this state and never realise it until the moment he died. Physical dissociation was all or nothing, there were no half-way measures. He could see and hear nothing, feel nothing, he was essentially untouchable, and that too held dangers. Humans were not meant to undergo sensory deprivation for extended periods of time, he risked madness if he stayed that way for too long. So his solution was to spend one hour in isolation, and then one without it. The respite made the hours he had to spend feeling everything that much more agonising, but he judged the trade-off to be worth it.

At the moment he was enduring one of the hours where he was compelled to feel everything. His entire body was on fire, and he knew that the end could not be far off. He was close to nervous overload, to that point where pain receptors, overfired too many times, would shut down, and like a catastrophic overload on a computer, they would take with them a number of critical functions, such as autonomic respiration and heartbeat. He had seen it happen to a number of his own victims when he had first started doing covert field-operations, before he learned to sense exactly how far he could take each person without killing them, how much pain was simply too much, and how much was just enough to loosen a tongue. One way or another, this torment would be over soon.

As though the thought had ordered the deed, the agony ended. Cold metal fingers clamped around his torso, and he felt himself half-lifted, half-dragged away, his limbs weak and rubbery. The last thing he thought before his mind slid into shock from the sudden change to the state of his nervous system was to wonder why the torture had been halted before it killed him.

* * *

Padmé sat, staring at the walls of her new cell, but not really seeing them at all. This new cell was practically a carbon copy of the other, except that its walls were composed of grey basalt rather than durasteel, and the glow-panels were slightly dimmer and yellowish, giving it a more naturalistic feel than the harsh, white light of the other cell. At the moment, however, she took no note of her surroundings, her only thought was for the terrible sight that had had met her eyes less than ten minutes ago.

Seeing Vader like that was a shock. She had known, intellectually, that to sustain the wounds she had seen on him the night before her exodus from Coruscant he must have suffered terribly. Seeing him thrash against the restraints that had held him in place, hearing his agonised screams, that was altogether different, altogether more horrifying. The knowledge that it was for her sake, for the sake of attempting to keep her safe and protecting her honour, that he was subject to that agony; that made her feel guilty. The knowledge that this was not the first time, that he had been doing the same for months without her ever knowing a thing; that made her feel _awful_.

She was wallowing, she knew, and she knew that dwelling on the past could not change it. Vader had never told her what was going on, had never consulted her or asked for input into his actions, she should not feel guilty for the suffering she had never asked him to endure, but she could not help it. He had done those things for _her_.

Her train of thought was interrupted by the click of the door-lock. Like all the doors here, it swung open rather than sliding to one side, and in doing so it blocked her view of the entrance, but she ceased to care when Vader was flung bodily into the small cell, landing in a heap of tangled limbs and staying there, quite motionless. She was at his side almost before the door swung shut again, but he did not react to her presence. In fact he still had not moved at all, and she began to fear the worst. She slid two fingers around his throat to check his pulse, and was relieved to find it, although she had no idea whether it was strong or not, the mere confirmation that he was alive was enough to make her a little happier. With a great deal of effort, since she was in a rather poor position to do so, she shifted him so that he lay out flat on his back, his head pillowed on her thighs. It was not likely to make him much more comfortable, but it was something, and at the moment she needed to do something for him, as much for her own sake as for the fact that he deserved it from her. Beyond that, however, there was little she could do but wait for him to wake up.

As she waited, she studied his face suddenly acutely aware of the striking resemblance to her memories of Anakin Skywalker. She had felt strongly enough before about Vader's sufferings on her behalf, but now the realisation that it might also be Anakin who had done those things for her was a fresh assault on her spirits.

"Anakin, why didn't you say anything?" she asked in a whisper, but predictably enough received no response from the unconscious man.

* * *

Obi-Wan Kenobi checked his appearance in the mirror one last time. It still caught him by surprise sometimes when he saw his reflection in passing and saw the very different face that now looked out at him. His beard was gone, shaved clean off, and his hair was now coal-black instead of a light brown. He was wearing contacts that deepened his eye-colour from grey to blue, and his usual robes were replaced by a crisp business suit. He needed to acclimatise himself to his new appearance now; because once they reached Coruscant they could afford no slip-ups. Satisfied that everything was in place he rang the chime on the door that separated his half of the cabin from the other half. A female voice bid him enter and the door slid to one side, allowing him to do so.

Sabé sat in front of a mirror in the other half of the cabin they were sharing sliding hairpins into place to hold her recently blonde hair in a functional bun at the back of her head. Her eyes were also changed, but unlike him she had altered their colour completely, electing to go with a shade of green so dark it was almost black. She too wore business attire and already clipped to her lapel was an ID that proclaimed her name to be Trella Varon, a journalist affiliated with the Naboo News service.

That was their cover for this expedition, a small stroke of brilliance on her part. Sabé had reasoned that they could start with legitimate enquiries into the whereabouts of Padmé Amidala. News on their best loved public figure was something the Nubian populace were crying out for, and so no one would think it odd if Nubian reporters arrived on Coruscant and began asking questions about her whereabouts. It made him uncomfortable though. He had worked undercover as a Jedi, but never in quite such a high-profile identity. Not to mention that this time he would not be able to call on the Force, the risk was just too great now that they knew that Palpatine had Force-sensitive agents besides Vader, _especially_ if they were on Coruscant. Even bringing his lightsaber was a huge risk, no matter how cleverly it was disguised and concealed in the holo-recording equipment they were carrying, but that was something he _would_ _not_ have left behind, especially since when the time came they would probably have to fight their way out with Padmé.

"It's nearly time," he said, somewhat unnecessarily since Sabé was probably well aware of the time, but he was nervous and it was something to do.

She glanced at him in her mirror.

"Are we all packed up then?"

He did not need the Force to know that she was humouring him, they had gone through everything together twenty minutes ago.

"You know we are," he told her.

She gave him a small smile.

"Yes I do," she allowed, "Relax, you look ready to chew through the bulkhead."

"It's that obvious?"

He had thought he was concealing it better than that.

"Master Kenobi _I_ was putting less effort into keeping my face neutral on the first day I arrived at the Academy to start training as a Royal Handmaiden, and I was _terrified_ out of my _wits_."

He would have made a response, but was interrupted by the small jolt of the transport touching down in a bay on one of Coruscant's many orbital docking stations. He and Sabé picked up the duffels that held their clothes and equipment and headed out. They would take one of the scheduled shuttles down to the surface of the planet and then get straight to work trying to find Padmé Amidala Vader. Obi-Wan just hoped that they would actually find her and not merely find notice of her death already.

* * *

Vader's eyes snapped open, very nearly causing Padmé to jump out of her skin in surprise. She had lost track of how much time had passed since he had been thrown in here with her, but her legs had long ago lost all feeling under his weight, so she thought that it must have been quite a while, hours perhaps. When his sulphurous yellow eyes met her own, for a moment his face twisted into an expression that she could not identify, but she did not need to know his expressions well to recognise that almost immediately afterwards he had schooled his features to impassivity to mask whatever it was had been there before. It was a trick she herself had perfected; a mask of neutrality was, after all, a very useful thing to be able to project in a political forum.

She felt a pang, that he would endure unthinkable torment to protect her virtue, but he did not trust her enough to show signs of what he was feeling. She was caught once again by the knowledge that she had barely bothered to get to know this man she was married to. She had judged him long before she had married him, and in so doing had made an incredible mistake, one that she could only see with the benefit of hindsight, because at the time all the evidence had supported her position.

"Senator."

The once-prided honorific felt bitter to her ears for the first time as it drew her attention back to him. Before it had been a sign of everything she had worked so hard to achieve, a term of respect. Now it was nothing more than an impersonal title coming from a man who had a right to so much more from her.

"Padmé," she corrected him.

His brow furrowed, a universal sign of confusion.

"I want you to call me by my name," she clarified for him, "Please?"

"If you wish it…Padmé."

The way he said it was slightly hesitant, which was understandable given that this was the first time he had ever called her by her name. It was absurd that she should feel such happiness over so small a thing, but she did.

"How do you feel?" she asked him.

"Fine."

"That's a lie," she observed, it had to be, there was no way, Sith or not, that he could feel fine after what she had seen, "I saw what they were doing to you."

His expression changed, and this time he did not try to hide it, but it did little good, she still could not read him well enough to tell what he was feeling. He said nothing, however.

"Would you have ever told me?" she tried again.

"Told you what?" he asked tonelessly.

"Why they were doing that to you. Would you have ever told me about what Palpatine wanted from you, from us?"

"No," he said in the same flat voice, "It was not important."

"It would have been important to _me_," she countered softly.

"You had already made your wishes clear," he said, "I simply did what was necessary to support your choice."

"My choice would have been different if I had known."

"I know."

There was little she could say to that, and he did not continue, so the silence stretched between them for several long minutes. Then, uncharacteristically, he was the next one to speak.

"You should not feel guilty, or blame yourself."

"I know."

"But you do so anyway."

"How can I not?" she asked rhetorically, "Until six months ago I was afraid that you would rape me just because you _wanted_ to, now I find out that you didn't even though you were _ordered_ to."

"The choice was mine, Padmé, you aren't responsible for my actions. I do not regret what I did, and if the choice was put before me again, I would do the same."

"Even not telling me?"

"Even that."

"Why, though?"

His gaze dropped away from her own for the first time since his eyes had opened.

"Because," he said quietly, "You would have insisted on sacrificing yourself to stop it."

"You make it sound as though that would have been a bad thing."

"I did not want you to compromise yourself."

She had to wonder how she could have missed this side of Vader for so long. Had she been walking around with her eyes shut for the entirety of her marriage? Seeing only what she wanted to see until the truth was shoved forcefully in her face? Or was the mask of the Dark Lord really that all-encompassing?

"So instead you let yourself be tortured."

It was not really a question, but he apparently took it that way.

"Yes."

"Do you really value your own well-being so little?"

"I merely took the best course of action under the circumstances."

This was going nowhere, she could see that. Was he really that unaware of how large an issue this was between them, or was he deliberately stonewalling her for some unfathomable reason? Deciding to shelve the topic for now, she promised herself that she would try to come back to it later if she could.

"If you say so," she sighed in a way that left no doubt that she was not convinced or satisfied by what had passed between them, "Do you know where we are?"

Vader nodded.

"On Coruscant. This place is within the foundations of the Imperial Palace."

"And completely hidden from anyone except Palpatine, I suppose."

"Anyone except Palpatine or a Jedi," Vader confirmed.

"A Jedi?" Padmé queried, "How would a Jedi know about this place?"

"The Imperial Palace is built on the site of the old Jedi Temple."

"I know that," the construction of the Palace Complex had been the talk of the Newscasts for weeks when they first began, four months ago, "What does it have to do with this place?"

"Not all of the Temple was destroyed during the construction, the bottom levels remained untouched, and that is where we are."

"But how would they know that it had been converted into a prison?"

Vader remained silent. For a moment she was puzzled by that, until what he had said actually sank in.

"Wait, when you say _untouched_, you don't really mean…?"

"Yes I do."

She looked for some sign that this might be a joke, however bizarre, but could find none. He looked deadly serious.

"You expect me to believe that the _Jedi_ built this prison?"

"Not quite in line with their pure and virtuous image, is it?" Vader asked. There could be no mistaking the wryness of his tone now.

"And those things that I saw…"

"Are quite original, I assure you," he smiled, but she could not see any sign of humour in it, "The Jedi would very much like to forget that there was ever a time when _they_ were the merciless hunters of the Sith rather than the current reversed state of affairs, but it _did_ happen, before the formation of the Brotherhood of Darkness a millennium ago. Those _delightfully_ barbaric machines are stained with the blood of my predecessors…many generations removed of course."

Her better judgement told her that she ought to leave this topic well alone, but she could not help a certain morbid sense of curiosity. The two instincts battled with one another, but eventually curiosity won out. Vader had already proven himself to be something of an expert in historical matters, and his viewpoint was a fascinating one. Besides, it was hardly as though she had something better to do at the moment.

"Tell me about it."

* * *

So, what's your verdict? Leave me a review and let me know!


	10. Learning

For disclaimers, warnings and pairing notifications see Chapter 1.

Author Note: Well folks, it's definitely been a while. I could make excuses, real life, writing difficulties etc., but I'm sure none of you guys are particularly interested in any of that. Let me just take this time to reassure you all that this story is not (fairly obviously), nor will ever be, abandoned (unless of course there is overwhelming agreement from you, the audience, that this story has gone to hell, in which case I won't torture you further). I wrote this specifically to revive a dead idea, so it would be silly of me not to see it through. Plus I have the epilogue written up already! Anyway, since it's already been delayed so long, without further ado, on with the show...

* * *

"Tell me, Padmé, what do you know about galactic history just after the signing of the Treaty of Coruscant?"

He had moved from his original position with his head in her lap, and was now sat facing her, cross-legged and with a straight back and steady hands. He had not shown a single sign of any residual effects from the torture he had so recently endured and she wondered at his self-control. She knew, intellectually, that the Jedi were capable of such feats of endurance and that therefore logically a Sith would be as well, but it was different to have seen him writhing and screaming and now to watch him sit and speak as if nothing were out of the ordinary. She found it more than a little unnerving.

"Not much," she admitted, "Learning about the Treaty itself was a mandatory part of Republican History at the Theed Academy, but other than that and a few generalities I didn't look into it much. I was more interested in recent history because I felt it was more relevant."

Vader nodded.

"In essence, then, the treaty established peace between the Republic and the Sith Empire, which had recently re-emerged as a galactic power after several centuries of dormancy. A significant fraction of the galaxy came under the dominion of the Sith, including the territories of the Mid-Rim and Outer Rim along the Hydian Way and the Perlemian Trade Route, the Atrivis, Quelii, Lohara, Auril, Kastolar and Kessel Sectors, the Roche Cluster, the Cronese Mandate and the other systems around the Cron Drift, the Tion Hegemony and even some of the Core Systems in that area such as Borleias, Velusia, Jagga Two and Arkania. The Republic actually lost Coruscant before signing the treaty, but regained control of the system as part of the settlement.

"In any case, the Treaty established a state of official peace between the two galactic governments. The truth is, however, that there was no actual peace between them. The war was simply continued via more covert means with both empires sending covert agents into each other's territory to carry out acts of espionage and sabotage, to create unrest and disrupt each other's governments. The Jedi were heavily involved in the Republic's efforts in this regard, and since the Jedi Temple had been virtually destroyed when the Sith conquered Coruscant, they chose to move the headquarters of the Order back to their most ancient monastery on Tython, in the Deep Core and leave the Temple site officially abandoned, while secretly building this facility within its foundations. Over the course of the next century and a half there is a very long list indeed of mid- and low-level officials of the Sith Empire that simply disappeared without a trace, and I would wager a significant amount that many of them were held here, without being formally charged or afforded trials or any of the other rights that the Republic claims to hold as sacred for all sentient beings."

"You can't know that," Padmé could not resist interrupting, "Just because Sith were disappearing doesn't mean the Republic was responsible, much less the Jedi. After all isn't it a Sith tradition to earn advancement through covert violence, such as betrayal and assassination?"

"That came later," Vader countered, "after the institution of the Rule of Two, and during a period when the Sith Order itself was operating in secret. At the time of which we are speaking, however, circumstances were different. Violence was still a legitimate way to gain advancement, yes, but there was a strict protocol to such challenges, and formal duels were the norm rather than more underhanded tactics."

He paused for a moment.

"Nevertheless, I take your point, it does not _necessarily_ follow that any of these officials were incarcerated here, although I believe it to be likely. The age of these levels is consistent with the beginning of this period, and I find it hard to believe that a facility like this could be built and then _not_ used. Also, the holocron records of several of the Sith who lived through this period refer often and in great detail to a continuing war with the Jedi. If you are looking for something more concrete, however, the end of this period saw the disappearance of a number of the Sith Lords that made up the Empire's ruling Council who were also not heard from again. Of the twelve Lords that made up the Council five vanished, and of those five, the personal holocrons of three were among the many Sith artefacts that my master and I recovered from the Jedi Archives. I think it is reasonable to believe that this is the most likely location for their incarceration. Not long after their disappearance the Sith Empire collapsed as Republic took advantage of the disorganisation produced by the weakening of the ruling council to initiate a new conflict that resulted in the fall of the Sith Empire. The Jedi rebuilt the Temple and made it their headquarters again within five years."

"Fascinating," Padmé breathed sincerely, a storyteller Vader was not, but there was something compelling about his abbreviated narratives, "And what happened to the Sith then?"

"Unfortunately even to Sith history this period is a blank, there are no holocrons that I know of that cover the period from the collapse of the Second Sith Empire to the rise of Darth Ruin, over a thousand years later, and he was a Dark Jedi rather than a true Sith Lord. My guess is that either there were no surviving Sith Lords from the downfall of the Second Sith Empire, that they were all hunted down and destroyed by the Jedi, or else they fled to rebuild their strength but failed to find apprentices to carry on their legacy over the intervening millennium."

"Wait, if they died out then how can _you_ be here?" she asked, then felt embarrassed at the inelegance of the question. So much for her famed debating skills.

"What I mean to say is, surely for you to be here and for there to be a distinction between you and a Dark Jedi, as you say there is, there must be some connection between yourself and these Sith?"

"The connection is indirect," Vader explained, "Darth Ruin founded his new empire on the basis of Sith teachings, and he called it the New Sith Empire, but he had only an imperfect grasp of the traditions and powers that are inherent to our order. It was not until a thousand years after him, with Darth Bane, that the Sith were restored to our true traditions again. Bane was a member of the Brotherhood of Darkness, who inherited the same Empire that Ruin had founded much earlier and who were at war with the Republic, but he was dissatisfied with the ways of the Brotherhood of Darkness, considering them to be weak.

"According to his own holocron he journeyed to Korriban and discovered the secret archives of Sith Holocrons that are stored in the tombs. He also communed with the spirits of some of the Sith Lords that are entombed in the Valley of the Sith Lords, and in the process was educated in the true ways of the Sith. He learned of the Rule of Two, ironically from the holocron of Darth Revan, who was a Dark Jedi rather than a true Sith albeit one whose understanding of Sith teachings was far greater than many other Dark Jedi and who might have destroyed the Jedi but for simple bad luck, and decided that this was the true way in which the Sith should operate, preparing ourselves in secrecy until we could be assured of victory against the Jedi and any others who seek to wipe us out.

"Bane engineered the destruction of the Brotherhood of Darkness by teaching them the technique of the Thought Bomb, an ancient Sith ritual that can destroy any living thing across a massive area, but at the cost of the lives of those who undertake the ritual. The Brotherhood used the Thought Bomb against Lord Hoth's Army of the Light at Ruusan, killing many Jedi and a significant portion of Lord Hoth's army, but of course dying in the process. After that the Jedi believed the Sith to be extinct, and Bane used that cloak of secrecy to begin preparing for the ultimate victory of the Sith, taking an apprentice named Zannah and training her until she became strong enough to supplant him and become the Sith Mistress. After that the line of masters and apprentices is unbroken down to my master and myself."

"I still don't understand what the difference is between a Dark Jedi and a 'real' Sith though. If the Jedi Order held holocrons of 'real' Sith Lords, and the traditions of the Sith could be learned from these holocrons, then surely Jedi who turned to the Dark Side would have had access to the teachings of the Sith and would count as 'real' Sith Lords?"

"No," Vader replied, shaking his head, "The holocrons are important yes, and a great deal of knowledge is held within them, but the true secrets of the Sith, the most ancient of our traditions and the most powerful skills available to us, can be learned only through communing with the spirits of the most ancient Sith Lords who are buried in the Valley of the Dark Lords on Korriban. Dark Jedi wield only shadows and half-truths compared to a Sith Lord because few of them journey to the Valley of the Dark Lords, and even if they did, the spirits of the Valley only commune with those that they judge to be worthy. As far as I know only Exar Kun and Darth Revan, of all the Dark Jedi in the last five thousand years were judged worthy by those spirits."

"Have _you_ been to the Valley of the Dark Lords then? Communed with these spirits?" Padmé asked, thinking that she could not really have asked for a better segue into the subject of her husband's past. Perhaps now she would be able to learn the answers to all the questions she had been asking herself over the past few months.

"Some of them, but not all. There are certain requirements that must be met before one can even consider attempting to commune with a Sith spirit. The spirits test a communicant's worthiness with challenges that can easily be fatal to the unprepared, their tombs alone are mazes filled with death traps that one must navigate, a feat which by itself requires significant physical and mental ability to survive, and beyond that the spirits themselves test the Force-abilities of those who make it through in ways that can leave a weak or unprepared person dead, insane or even soulless."

Padmé supposed that she should not be surprised by now by the fact that Vader could talk about the possibility of ending up dead or worse as matter-of-factly as if he was discussing the weather, but she _did_ find it profoundly disturbing. He probably considered the risk of a fate worse than death as perfectly normal in the course of learning to use the Force, but to her it seemed positively barbaric, especially compared to Jedi training, which, while demanding, at least left those who were not up to the challenge alive and able to pursue other walks of life as they pleased. She was careful not to phrase it exactly like that, however; she did not want to insult Vader just when he was starting to really _talk_ to her about things. She also should not have been surprised, but was, when Vader had a logical response to her concerns.

"As I said when we discussed this before," he told her, "one of the most important qualities for a Sith to have is the strength to maintain control over themselves in the face of the addictive nature of our way of using the Force. We cannot afford weakness, particularly given that our powers far exceed those of the Jedi. Our discipline must therefore also exceed the Jedi, and those who are too weak to achieve such discipline pose a very serious risk to society at large, as you are already aware thanks to the many examples provided by the Jedi Order of what happens to someone who gives in to the temptations of the Force. It is far better for a weak initiate to die in the trials that are part of Sith training, than for millions or perhaps billions of lives to be endangered by a powerful Force-user who has succumbed to their own power."

"I suppose," Padmé replied uncertainly. She could see the logic in the philosophy, even if it did seem like a very cold logic indeed, but then the lessons of history seemed to give absolute truth to Vader's warnings about the potential consequences of leniency.

"What was it like then? Training to be a Sith?"

Instead of answering the question though, Vader fixed her with a penetrating stare and asked her a question of his own.

"Why are you asking me these things?"

She knew that she should have expected him to ask this, and to do so early on, she had never thought her husband to be a fool whatever else she might have thought of him before, but she was still brought up short, and as a result her answer was less than scintillating.

"I want to know more about you," was her fairly obvious reply.

"You were never interested before," Vader observed, "Why now all of a sudden? What changed while you were on Alderaan?"

Padmé remained silent. She could easily guess the answer he was thinking about, and while he was partially right that was not all of it by any means. She just didn't know how to explain that to _him_ and sound believable.

"I'm not him, Padmé," he said quietly, turning his gaze towards the door, "Your friend is gone."

"It isn't that," she said, then re-thought her statement, "It isn't _just_ that," she amended, "I…that is…" the words attempted to stick in her throat, but she took a deep breath and forced them out, "I was wrong. I thought I knew you, and it turned out that I had a lot of things – _everything_, really – wrong. I suppose – hope – it's better late than never to correct that mistake."

Vader turned his head to look at her once more, and she assumed that he was trying to gauge her honesty, so she met his yellow eyes steadily, trying to non-verbally convince him of the honesty of her intentions. Eventually he returned his stare to the far wall of their cell, but what he might have seen she could not tell. His face might as well have been carved from granite for all the expression it showed.

"May I ask you to be honest with me, Padmé?" he asked at length.

"Of course," she agreed readily.

"What was it that changed your mind?"

Of all the questions she thought that she could have expected at that moment, that was definitely not one of them, so for a moment she had to think carefully about her answer.

"I'd like to say that it was a gradual process, that I was observant enough to notice that a lot of your actions didn't necessarily fit with your reputation," she said slowly, "I suppose I had a few doubts along the way, you did a lot of things that didn't fit with my preconceptions about you. But I think that _honestly_ the thing that made me wake up and really look at what was in front of me the whole time was seeing your real face. I admit I hadn't expected you to look as you do."

"You expected a monster."

"I admit that is true as well, but I think that it was your age that surprised me the most," she disagreed, after all she still remembered the night she had looked on her husband's true face for the first time vividly, "I expected you to be older, and that caused me to wonder about your past. It was while I was looking for your records that I discovered the DNA match between you and Anakin."

"I see."

For a long period, perhaps several minutes, he was silent, and Padmé was just on the verge of trying to start another line of conversation when he spoke again.

"Sith training is difficult, not as similar to Jedi training as you might think, partly because, as I said, it is intended to instil a far greater strength of will and sense of discipline in the trainee, but also partly because it must be conducted in secret. As such it is far less structured, being tailored to the individual master and apprentice pair and their circumstances. Ironically the first step in _my_ training was to gain a basic education. Growing up on the street taught me a great many useful things, how to pick pockets and slice into credit accounts, how to fight to defeat opponents much larger and stronger than myself, how to hide and use my surroundings to my own advantage in any situation I might find myself, it even caused me to begin developing my talent with the Force to do small and simple things. For example before I met my master I could already move small objects with my mind and fool others into not registering my presence. However it left me severely lacking in fundamental areas such as literacy. I went to school right here on Coruscant, in the Manarai District as a matter of fact, for two years, and spent evenings and weekends learning to develop my basic ability to channel the Force under my master's guidance.

"I suppose those years constituted the closest that I ever came to leading a 'normal' life. School was difficult at first, I had problems adjusting to the regimented nature of lessons and the rules of the classroom, after living without those things on the streets, but once I surpassed those difficulties, I did reasonably well with my studies. I was no child prodigy, but neither was I a slow learner, and it did not take me long to reach the same standard as my peers in those subjects which I had previously been lacking in, and once I was at their level I found learning to be quite enjoyable. Outside of school, my time was devoted to the basics of the Force. I learned to control my emotions and then call on them at will for power as I needed it. I honed those skills that I had already learned through improvisation on the streets, such as telekinesis and simple mind-tricks, and learned new ones, such as how to sense the world around me and discern all changes that went on in it, rather than just those that presented a direct threat to me.

"Once I reached eleven, however, my powers had grown to the point where we risked detection by the Jedi, so my master sent me off-world, to the old Sith Academy on Korriban itself. There I was placed under the scrutiny and tutelage of a number of instructors who began to prepare me in earnest to become a Sith. I studied Force-lore and Sith magic from the holocrons at the Academy and was also instructed in a wide variety of areas from lightsaber combat to wilderness survival to strategy and tactics. My master would travel out periodically to test my progress, direct my research into the holocrons and continue my training in the use of the Force.

"After three years of training in this fashion, I became advanced enough in my skill with the Force to learn an ancient and highly useful piece of Sith magic: a spell that allows the caster to disguise their Force-presence against probes by other Force-sensitives. The spell can be used to simply hide the fact that the caster is a Dark-Sider, or at a more advanced level it can be used to cloak the fact that the caster is Force-sensitive at all, or at the highest level it can be used to cloak all traces of a Force-presence, rendering the caster completely undetectable by other Force-sensitives. My master sent me on a pilgrimage to Dxun, the large moon that orbits the planet of Onderon, which is famous for the native people known as the Beast Riders. There I entered the tomb of Freedon Nadd, one of the ancient Sith Lords. I trekked through the jungles of Dxun until I found the tomb, and there I entered it and communed with the spirit of Nadd himself. Even after that, however, it took me nearly three months to master the spell that Nadd taught me to the point where I could maintain it constantly without any hint of wavering. Once I had, however, I was able to return to my master's side on Coruscant without the fear of detection by the Jedi.

"By that time, my training was mostly over. All that was left to me was independent study into those areas that I had a particular talent for or that were especially necessary for my intended role in the New Order. Instead I began to undertake tasks that were intended to test and hone my capabilities, ensuring that I was ready to take up my planned role. I was sent on numerous covert missions to lay the groundwork for the New Order, and even to steer the progress of the Clone Wars as necessary. I also began to undertake the pilgrimages to the Valley of the Dark Lords that are the true trials of a Sith. I visited the Valley twice, entering the tombs of Marka Ragnos and Ludo Kressh and learning the secrets that their spirits could teach me, but I was not able to undertake the other pilgrimages because of the end of the Clone Wars and the establishment of the Empire, and since then I have been occupied with hunting down those remaining Jedi who seek to restore their Order and move against us and pacifying the rebellions that your former friends in the Senate seem to delight in fomenting."

Padmé tried not to take offence at that last comment as she processed Vader's story. While it had been a lengthy speech, at least for him, and had told her quite a bit about what his life had been like, and hinted at quite a bit more, she did not doubt that even if she extracted every last scrap of information and nuance out of what Vader had just told her, she would still have barely scratched the surface concerning what Sith training was like and what it involved. Still, he had given her many ideas, things that she would never have thought of on her own, about how to proceed in her quest to find out more about him, it was just a matter of which one to pursue. She realised, however, that in spite of the fact that he had given her a lot to think about, she probably should not allow the silence to continue for too long, lest he think that she had taken what he had said badly or lost interest, so she asked the question that seemed most immediately relevant and also least likely to result in more earth-shattering revelations that would require time and concentration to process.

"How many more tombs did you have to visit, then?"

"Two more on Korriban," Vader replied, "The tombs of Ludo Kressh and Dathka Graush. And I had also intended to journey to Yavin to commune with the spirit of Exar Kun as well."

"And after visiting them you would have been considered a Sith Lord?"

"Not quite," Vader explained patiently, "I am already a Dark Lord of the Sith, I earned that title the day that I swore my life to the Sith cause. The pilgrimages to the tombs are trials that I needed to overcome before I could take the title of Sith _Master_. If I had managed to visit them all and commune with the spirits that reside within each then I would be considered ready to challenge my master for leadership of our order and after that to begin training my own apprentice in the ways of the Sith."

"But surely then Palpatine would have found some way to prevent you from making those journeys? He would know that after you had made them you would be ready to assassinate him and take his position."

"I realise that it does not make much sense from an outside point of view, Padmé," he said, again with an obvious air of patience, "but you must understand that my master _expected_ me to attempt to kill him. All Sith masters know that ultimately they will meet their ends at the hands of their apprentices. To die in some other fashion is an indicator of failure on their part as masters, for they have either failed to find an apprentice at all, or they have trained one who was not up to the task of being a Sith Lord. That is not to say that my master, or any other Sith master would offer themselves willingly to their apprentice's challenge, indeed it is quite the opposite, they fight tooth and nail to defeat their own apprentices because only in that way can they be sure that the apprentice is strong enough to succeed them; but ultimately the Sith must be continued, and if they are to retain their strength then it is to be expected that masters will face, and ultimately fall to assassination attempts by their apprentices."

This time Padmé _did_ allow the silence to continue as she attempted to wrap her head around this strange dichotomy. Vader was right, it _didn't_ seem sensible, not at all, but he seemed to be convinced that it was also true, that Palpatine _would_ allow, and even _expect_, his apprentice to progress down a road that would ultimately lead to Vader planning his assassination. So much for a line of questioning that would not lead to earth-shattering revelations.

"I guess I'll take your word for it," she muttered eventually.

Vader nodded but said nothing.

* * *

"There is one other possibility," stated the Duros who called himself Coom Crys, although it was fairly unlikely that this was really his name, "but it's an incredibly long shot."

"Tell me anyway," Sabé said, leaning forward over the table that took up most of the space in the cantina-booth they were currently occupying.

The Duros made a quick and discreet scan of the cantina crowd, trying to discern any who might be eavesdropping on them, before leaning in closer himself.

"The Imperial Palace," Crys said quietly, "One of the things I did while searching for your friend in the prison system was to check the requisitions for consumable supplies by the Justice Department, you know, just to check that their requisitions tallied with the number of prisoners they claimed to have so that I could be sure that she wasn't being held without being registered in the system. What I noticed is that for some reason small requisitions have been made by the Justice Department, but routed to the Imperial Palace rather than one of the registered prisons. Now either it means that Palpatine has some bizarre taste for prison rations at dinner, or he's maintaining a private dungeon somewhere in the Palace, or he's trying to cover the trail for something else entirely. I think the first option's unlikely, but either of the other two could be true. Even now that he's in charge of things, our beloved Emperor is still very cloak and dagger in his dealings, and this requisition could easily be mislabelled in the records, or re-routed in transit, or practically anything really, but it's the only thing even resembling a lead that I can give you. Everywhere else on Coruscant is completely clean, and since you say you've ruled out the possibility of an off-world transfer…"

The Duros trailed off, splaying his hands in mid-air in the Duros equivalent of a shrug. Sabé nodded, while it was not exactly the news that she had hoped for, at least she now knew where not to look. And there was always the hope that Crys' lead would pan out into something more. At the very least Sabé thought that it was an oddity worth checking up on. She reached into her jacket and pulled out a data-card that contained account information, which she slid across the table. The Duros' services had not come cheap, despite the fact that she had made contact with him through the Rebel cell on Coruscant, but with the money Vader had made available to her as payment for protecting Padmé, she could easily afford it.

"Thank you for trying," she said sincerely.

The Duros nodded, sweeping up the data-card and tucking it into one of his pockets. Then he downed the last of his drink and stood.

"I hope you find your friend," he said with a formal nod before vanishing into the crowd of patrons.

Sabé counted to five hundred slowly, sipping her own drink as she did so, before downing the rest of it and departing from the cantina herself. She walked the half-kilometre or so to the nearest public transport node and caught a transport headed back to the vicinity of the hotel that she and Obi-Wan were staying at. As the transport lifted away from the ferrocrete street and seamlessly joined one of the many streams of air-traffic that wove through Coruscant's atmosphere she pulled out her comm.-link and dialled the Jedi Master's frequency.

"_Darvek here_," came the somewhat distorted reply as he picked up.

"Orrian, it's Trella," she identified herself, "I think I just got a break on our story."

"_A solid lead?_" he queried.

"Not exactly," she admitted, "But I think it's worth looking into."

"_Alright then. I'm just finishing up something with Senator Mothma's office; I'll be about an hour, but I can meet you when I'm done if you give me a location_."

"Better make it our suite, we don't want to get scooped," she told him. They had swept the suite they were sharing at the Ariminian Hotel very thoroughly for surveillance devices, and it was the only place where they could be reasonably sure that they were not being eavesdropped on.

"_I'll be there as soon as I can_," Obi-Wan promised.

"I'll be waiting. Varron out."

* * *

"Nihilus serves as a reminder that even the Sith are not immune to the temptations of the Force's power under the right circumstances, although his were certainly extreme, and the extreme danger of a Sith Lord succumbing. No Dark Jedi in all the history of the Jedi Order matches Nihilus in terms of the danger they presented to the galaxy. His hunger would have resulted in the total sterilisation of all life in the entire galaxy if he had not been stopped. That is why I chose his mask to use in concealing my identity, to remind myself of the dangers of the Force and the reasons why I must always remain in control of myself."

Padmé let go of the breath that she had not realised she had been holding until just then as Vader finished his story. She had not expected her relatively innocuous question about his reasons for choosing the design of his mask to lead to such a horrifying story. Apparently his mask was a millennia-old Sith relic that had first belonged to an ancient Sith Lord named Darth Nihilus. According to Vader, Nihilus had succumbed to the power of the Force after somehow surviving the destruction of all life on an entire planet, which Vader assured her would be a traumatic experience of the highest order for a Force-sensitive at a distance, much less at close range. He had become so powerful that he was able to reach out across galactic distances with his powers, and to achieve feats that most Force-users would die trying to match. However his power had come at an awful price, he had become like a walking plague, killing anything and everything in the vicinity with his mere presence, and his body had decayed until he had apparently only been able to go on living by trapping his spirit inside his armour. If she had thought that the mask was a fear-inspiring symbol before then that was nothing compared to what she felt now that she knew the true story behind the object.

She did not miss, however, Vader's stated reason for choosing to wear the mask of a Sith Lord with such a terrible history behind him. While it was only a small titbit, Padmé filed it away with the same level of attention that she had given to every other piece of personal information that she had learned about her husband over what must surely by now have been quite a few hours of listening to his stories and debating various issues with him over the last several days; she had learned very swiftly that nothing was insignificant when it came to this complex and easily misunderstood man.

Granted his views on some, even many, issues were well out of step with the ideals that she had subscribed to all her life, but she had to admit that if he had been a Senator arguing in the Grand Congress in the way that he had with her in this cell, she would certainly have opposed him, there was no question of that in her mind, but she would also have respected the fact that he seemed to have the best interests of the people at the heart of his ideas. So far, everything he had told her, every story he had related, both about himself and about Sith history and philosophy, had only served to reinforce the realisation that she had come to six months ago, that Darth Vader was in fact a good man, the kind of man that, if not for the fact that he was a Sith, she could easily have been proud to know, proud to be married to.

In fact, if she was honest with herself, it was not even the fact that the man was a Sith; although she did still find the philosophy disturbing on personal level, she could not deny that much of what he had told her about Sith beliefs made sense, and even might be considered benevolent if it were not for the fact that their ideas were so far out of step with the prevailing ways of the galaxy. No, what continued to hold her back from admitting to herself that she admired this man who had come through so much and shared her ideals, the core of them if not the execution at any rate, was his seemingly unwavering loyalty to Palpatine. How could Vader be who he was, believe what he believed, or at least _stated_ that he believed, and yet still follow that man?

Since she felt that the cordiality between them was still new enough to be tenuous, it was not a question she could ask outright, so she had been nibbling around the edges of the topic for a while now, asking him about things related to his life as a Sith, especially his training, in order to try and gain a better understanding of his relationship towards his master. Unfortunately, so far, she had not been able to discern much, and she was running out of ideas on how to approach the topic obliquely.

"Padmé."

She could tell by the sound of his voice, which, like his expression and his body language, she was gradually learning to read, that this was not the first time he had said her name since finishing his story.

"I'm sorry, I was thinking," she apologised, "You were saying?"

"Tell me about _your_ childhood," he requested, "before you became Princess of Theed."

The question was a surprising one, mostly because he had asked it unprompted. For all the things she had been wrong about when it came to Vader's character, she had been right about some things, little things, like the fact that he really _was not_ much of a talker. Although that was not quite fair, he had answered all of her questions without a word of objection or complaint, and frequently gone into great detail, but he never volunteered anything, and until now he had seemed perfectly content to let silences stretch between them.

But it was also surprising because he had never expressed any interest in her life before, not even her well-publicised life as a Senator. He had not seemed to want to get to know her, and she had taken that as a sign that he was only interested in her as a trophy wife rather than in building a real relationship with her. Perhaps the fact that he was asking now was a sign that that had changed.

"Before I became Princess of Theed I had been an Apprentice Legislator for eighteen months. My family are hold-overs of the Nubian nobility, from when we were a genuine monarchy instead of a symbolic one, and as such were quite wealthy, which essentially guaranteed that I would be able to pursue the career I wanted rather than the one that offered the greatest income. I suppose it was also part of my motivation to pursue a vocation in which I would have the opportunity to work for the good of all people. Naboo had given me so much that I felt obligated to give as much as I could back.

"At first, I chose to work with the humanitarian offices. Naboo has always had a strong tradition of providing aid to those in need, and I was proud of that tradition even when I was a young girl, so it seemed natural to want to do my part in furthering that work. I spent six months working to obtain immigration visas for displaced people who wanted to settle in the Naboo system, lobbying for other neighbouring systems to grant similar visas and procuring supplies and other resources that were needed for our efforts."

"But you didn't enjoy it?" Vader interrupted.

"Oh I enjoyed it," Padmé disagreed, "It was rewarding work, especially when we were successful. Sometimes I would get the opportunity to visit communities of people whose cases I had worked on myself, and watching them establish new lives on a strange world and knowing that I had made it possible for them to do that gave me a sesne of accomplishment like nothing I've done since. But I also discovered just how much legal red-tape there was surrounding the issue, both in Naboo's domestic laws and in Republican law in general. In the end I decided that I could do more good by working towards public office and then doing what I could to lift those restrictions. So I requested a transfer to the palace to work in the Legislative Affairs Secretariat. That was where I met Palpatine for the first time. He was working as one of the policy directors, reconciling the agenda of the Nubian government with the edicts of the Senate.

"I never learned what it was exactly that brought me to his attention, but shortly after I started in Legislative Affairs he had taken me under his wing. He taught me the ins and outs of politics, introduced me to a number of influential businessmen and holo-news producers and then ultimately encouraged me to join the race to be elected Princess of Theed."

"Interesting," Vader said in the tone of voice that she had privately labelled 'thoughtful', "What about your family, what was their opinion on your altered career goal?"

"My parents were supportive," she replied, "In fact I think they were secretly glad that I had moved into a more high-profile branch of politics. It gave them more opportunities to boast about my accomplishments. My sister, on the other hand, has always been of the opinion that I should never have made the move. She claims that I was much happier helping refugees than I ever have been in office-holding…"

"Were you?"

She was surprised by Vader's interruption, and the seemingly sharp tone in which it had been delivered, and she had to take a moment to think about the answer.

"I don't know," she said at length, "I suppose it was more immediately rewarding. But I know that the work I've done in the various offices that I've held will ultimately mean more, make more of a difference than anything I could have done as a member of the Refugee Relief Department."

"I see," Vader said.

He did not seem to have anything to add to that acknowledgement, and she presumed that he was digesting what she had just told him. Rather than returning to her own questions, however, she decided to wait for him to restart the conversation; it was a good bet that he had more questions, and she had a feeling that it was about to be her turn to do most of the talking.

* * *

So what did you think? Review and let me know!


End file.
